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About Clothier Springs

Founded in 2010 by Thomas F. McKeon CFA, CSCM is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. We advise and manage wealth, portfolios and discrete strategies for private and institutional asset owners.

We build and manage globally allocated, broadly diversified, liquid, transparent and low-cost portfolios exclusively of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), tailored for each investor’s unique goals, objectives and constraints. These optimally efficient portfolios give investors the best opportunity to meet their objectives, maximize returns, limit risk and minimize total costs and taxes.

Our sole mission is to help our clients preserve and grow their wealth, income and purchasing power in support of their stated objectives, at a risk level that lets them stay invested through inevitable, periodic, unnerving market volatility.


Mission

Our slogan—Timeless Truths. New Perspectives. Endless Evolution.—speaks to our values and mission—to help our clients meet their own unique investment objectives with greater certainty and reduced risk at low cost with evidence-based advice and portfolios.

We are mindful of abiding investment realities, always seeking to use new tools and techniques to improve client outcomes, reduce costs, and to endlessly evolve with ever-advancing investment theory, best practices and technological developments. Ethics, integrity, honesty and professional competence are paramount.


Philosophy

We believe that capturing market returns as efficiently as possible is the essence of optimized fiduciary investing. Any departure from that simple premise is a step towards greater costs, greater risk and greater outcome uncertainty. We believe that investment advice, counsel and management is a true profession and a noble business. We adhere to the CFA Institute Asset Manager Code of Conduct.


In Practice

Prudent, optimized investing reduces to this simple proposition:

Assembling the right mix (allocation) of market exposures—exposures that can enhance returns, mitigate risk or both, with well understood historic return and risk profiles—in the right proportions and the appropriate liquidity for your particular return and risk profile, and accessing them through the appropriate accounts, vehicles or products as cost effectively as possible. While complexity, activity and costs are the enemy of a good outcome, successful investing is neither simple, easy, purely static, or without risk.


Following the Evidence

Our advice, portfolios and strategies are built upon the bedrock of observable, empirical evidence, supported by academic research and implemented with the self-evident advantage of low-costs. We implement our investment advice with ultra low-cost market exposures—primarily Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs).

At Clothier Springs Capital Management, we hew to investing’s timeless truths while constantly seeking to expand our own thinking and to remain current with ever-evolving investment theory and best practices.

How We Help Our Clients Meet Their Objectives and Improve Their Outcomes




Low Cost

We are a low cost provider. Keeping portfolio costs down is the most direct path to better investor outcomes.

Investors earn returns net of all fees and costs. We are more focused on delivering returns to our clients than our own profitability.

To that end we keep our advisory fees as low as possible, to cover our costs and deliver the best net returns to our clients. As fiduciaries, we serve only one master: our clients.

Structure

Portfolio structure and advisor service structure are the primary determinants of investor outcome.

Our advisory services deliver evidence-based, institutional quality, globally allocated, broadly diversified, fully liquid portfolios implemented with ultra-low cost Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), optimized to each investor's objectives, tolerances and constraints. We package them as holistic investment programs for private clients or as Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO) services for institutions who choose not to maintain an in-house investment staff.

Risk Reduction

For appropriate accounts we use index options in a methodical, rules-based approach to both enhance returns and limit risk.

We have extensive experience and expertise in the use of equity options to beneficially modify the return and risk profiles of client portfolios, within a structural, rules-based protocol. These can be overlaid on a fully invested client portfolio or as a stand-alone strategy within an overall allocation.

Founder

Thomas F. McKeon, CFA®

Principal and Chief Investment Officer
Clothier Springs Capital Management

Managing Member
Clothier Springs Capital Partners

Tom is founder, principal and Chief Investment Officer at Clothier Springs Capital Management (CSCM) and Managing Member at Clothier Springs Capital Partners LLC. He advises clients, manages multi-asset class portfolios, builds discrete strategy portfolios, executes trades, and communicates with clients. In addition, Tom wears the info tech, database administration, marketing, web development and compliance hats as well.

He began his career as a registered investment advisor in 1993 after almost twelve years as an equity and foreign currency options market maker at the Philadelphia Stock Exchange (PHLX). Tom formed Clothier Springs Capital Management in 2010 after sixteen years with an independent investment advisory firm he co-founded in 1994 that was sold to a regional trust company. Tom has been a CFA Charterholder since 1995 and a member of the CFA Institute (National & Philadelphia Chapter) since 1991.

Tom formed Clothier Springs Capital Partners in late 2017 to make direct investments in real estate equity and debt in the private capital markets on behalf of member/partners.

Outside of work Tom enjoys woodwork, photography, reading, traveling, home improvement projects, spending time with his family and (still) trying to get better at playing guitar, bass, piano and golf. LaSalle University Class of 19781/2

Email Tom


Asset Manager Code of Conduct



The CFA Institute Asset Manager Code outlines the ethical and professional responsibilities of organizations that manage assets on behalf of clients. The principles and provisions address six broad categories:


  • Act in a professional and ethical manner at all times.
  • Act for the benefit of clients.
  • Act with independence and objectivity.
  • Act with skill, competence, and diligence.
  • Communicate with clients in a timely and accurate manner.
  • Uphold the applicable rules governing capital markets.

Download the Asset Manager Code here.