About Aspera
I knew I wanted to be a professional investor ever since I read a book about the stock market in my local library at the age of 16. I was actually looking for a book about buying real estate with no money down after watching a late night infomercial. Cut me some slack. I was 16, and the "expert" was on a yacht with 6 bikini-clad junior executives. Not surprisingly, books about the stock market and real estate were right next to each other at the library. I randomly picked out a book about stocks and was hooked. I knew what I wanted to study and what I wanted to be. I did still dabble in real estate, becoming the youngest real estate agent in Connecticut at the age of 18. I still remember knocking on doors to pitch my real estate skills only to have homeowners think I was there to mow their lawns.
I created Aspera following a 15-year career in the institutional money management business. In that time, I worked as a junior investment analyst, a fixed income analyst, an equity analyst, a junior portfolio manager, an asset allocation strategist, a trader, a portfolio manager, and Head of Equities. It was an exciting and rapid career progression, but I was tired of working for others. Group think, closet indexing, bureaucracy, and a counterproductive focus on short-term results were pervasive. Despite a top-tier performance track record, arbitrary investment constraints limited my ability to exploit outstanding investment opportunities, professionally and personally. I also wanted to have more direct contact with the people I was helping.
It was the encouragement (and gentle pestering) of industry peers, family, and friends that also led to the creation of Aspera. The idea behind Aspera was simple - build the type of investment management and financial planning firm that I would want to work with if I were the client. I now get to advise and manage money the way I see best, and I thoroughly enjoy getting to develop a partnership with the people I help.
If you're looking for a traditional financial adviser to put your assets in a bucket of mutual funds, rebalance it from time-to-time based on faulty risk models, and tell you "no one saw it coming" after every downturn, you're in luck! There are plenty of them out there. That's an approach you could easily do yourself. I actively build and manage customized portfolios for our clients based on their risk-tolerance and the ever-changing set of investment opportunities. I invest alongside my clients in the same securities.
As for the name "Aspera"...it's Latin for Stormy, which just happened to be the name of my dog when I founded the business. I figured Aspera Financial was a better name than Stormy Financial.