• A Wealth Management &
    Financial Planning Firm
    Charles Carroll Financial Partners is an independent wealth management and financial planning firm. Our role is to assist and enhance the journey toward the financial goals and aspirations of our clients. With decades of wealth management experience, Charles Carroll develops a comprehensive financial map that assists our clients through their financial lives.

  • Our Philosophy

    Each investor has specific, unique, and personal expectations with regards to the management of their portfolio. It is Charles Carroll Financial Partner’s responsibility to understand the client’s … read more...

  • Investment Methodology

    Our model employs an empirical data process that is highly sophisticated and quantitative in nature. This process is the result of over 20 years of pragmatic study and has been repeatedly back-tested … read more...

  • Value Proposition

    We will always put your interests first - ahead of our firm, and our employees. We will act as fiduciaries in every interaction for you. When we purchase investments for you, we will seek cost … read more...

May 16, 2011 By 4 Comments

Welcome to Charles Carroll Insights Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

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April 26, 2011 By 1 Comment

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April 26, 2011 By 2 Comments

The first thing we do is create a financial plan for you. We call it a living financial plan. It’s living because as your life changes, we are going to make changes to that financial plan to get you to those goals and aspirations that we set at the beginning. Once we have the financial plan in place, it will give us a guideline — a framework to work toward the asset allocation in your portfolio. Once the asset allocation is in place, we determine the securities that go into your portfolio and then give you feedback along the way to determine how you’re doing in achieving the goals that you’ve set.

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April 26, 2011 By 2 Comments

Every client of Charles Carroll has a client web portal. The portal is web based. It’s on a secure system and allows you access to your statements, your agreements, your performance reports that you might have, how your securities are doing, what the intent is and how we manage your assets, as well as giving you security reports — the individual security reports if you’d like to see what’s happening within your portfolio.

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January 24, 2011 By 2 Comments

Everyone should make sure that the manager of their assets is not the same company as the custodian of their assets. There should be a wall between the two. If the custodian of the assets is also the manager of the assets, there’s the opportunity of moving that money in and out of different firms. At Charles Carroll we set up a Chinese wall between the two. We can’t access the assets. We can’t take money out of the assets. We can only make trades to make sure there is a separation of what we are able to do for you. That way you know that you have control of your asset base.

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January 24, 2011 By 6 Comments

There’s a lot of conversation in the marketplace about fees. The first thing you want to do is make sure they’re not compounding fees within the asset management program. You want to make sure you don’t have a management fee let’s say on mutual funds AND then pay another fee — what they call a money manager fee on top of that. If you do that, you’ve got compounding fees. You could have fees in the 1 ½ to 2 ½ % range. What we do at Charles Carroll is we try to provide for you individual securities that do not have management fees., individual equities, individual bonds. We do use ETF’s but they have lower management fees, much lower than what you could find in a mutual fund. And then what we do is assess you with our management fee. And our management fee is lower than what you’re going to find in an equity mutual fund.

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January 24, 2011 By 6 Comments

First, look at the name on the individual securities that are being sold to you. If they’re mutual funds, are they the same name as the name on the wall of the broker? If they are, then there’s a potential of conflict of interest. They may be selling you the product because there’s an incentive for the broker to sell you that product. What you want to be able to do is separate those two and look for those particular securities that give you the best return for the lowest cost.

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January 24, 2011 By 2 Comments

Don’t take your eye off the goal. The expectation is that it is a straight line to that goal. It doesn’t work that way, especially over the short term. There are going to be a lot of bumps and grinds along the way. But don’t take your eye off the goal. Remember that when we give you the financial plan, we set timeframes and monetary goals on a yearly basis. And by doing that, we’re working towards those goals every time. Now it’s not going to be a straight line. There are going to be boundary markers that we’re going to go around sometimes. But remember that we’re working towards those goals that we set when we first sat down. And regardless of what’s happened in the marketplace, we’ve got our eye on the ball for you and we’re working towards your goal.

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January 21, 2011 By 8 Comments

Well I think you have to go back and look at what’s happened in history. You have to go back and say…What happened during the Cuban missile crisis or what happened during the invasion of Iraq? You have to look for specific problems in the marketplace or problems in the world and what’s happened with the marketplace ever since. Believe it or not, the market continues to provide value back year after year after year. So turn off CNBC, turn off CNN, turn off Fox News, and just take a deep breath if you’re concerned about where the market is going.

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November 29, 2010 By 2 Comments

The idea of fiduciary responsibility is that the financial manager is always acting in your best interests. If you’re working with a broker or a financial advisor, and they can’t prove to you that they have a fiduciary responsibility to you, then who are they really working for? How does that affect your portfolio? Ask. Ask your financial advisor, “Do you have a fiduciary responsibility to me, to my goals, to my family and to our needs? If they can’t answer positively, you need another financial advisor.

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