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A lot of you likely invest in a boglehead style. Wealthfront was an attempt to automate that while adding some bells and whistles on top; tax loss harvesting,

A lot of you likely invest in a boglehead style. Wealthfront was an attempt to automate that while adding some bells and whistles on top; tax loss harvesting, smart beta, etc. Curious to see how they succeed as part of UBS. I thought Marcus/Goldman was going to buy them personally, so a bit surprised UBS is getting in on this game.

msoad 5y ago
Did anyone get any real beta out of it for a sustainable period?
- blobbers 5y ago
  beta is correlation to the market (usually refers to SPY correlation). Not sure what you're saying.
  - msoad 5y ago
    sorry I meant alpha. oops
- im_asl 5y ago
  *Alpha
atuladhar 5y ago
Marcus bought HonestDollar, which is in the same space, a while ago, and has rebranded it as "Marcus Invest" * https://www.honestdollar.com/ https://www.honestdollar.com/ * https://www.marcus.com/us/en/invest https://www.marcus.com/us/en/invest
prepend 5y ago
When I looked at it the fees were way to high to justify to bogelheads. What is strange to me about robo advisors is that they are still charging a management fee instead of a flat fee. The algorithms are really basic and don’t have any real time changes so it seems weird to charge 25-50 basis points for what’s basically just an interview and time based rebalancing with some formulas that aren’t really better than existing ETFs. I’ve been expecting this to just be a feature for vanguard and fidelity since the “advise” could just be client side automation rules that nobody wants to build.
- xur17 5y ago
  Agreed. To me target date retirement funds honestly make more sense for most people.
  - tinalumfoil 5y ago
    I'm not sure about that. Targets funds fees are generally a percent not flat, you have less control over your money (which if you're doing a robo-advisor you probably have somewhat bespoke investing requirements) and they only make sense for tax-advantaged accounts (see [1]). Plus, people invest for reasons other than dated retirement targets. [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/vanguard-target-retirement-tax-bill-surprise-11642781228 https://www.wsj.com/articles/vanguard-target-retirement-tax-...
- teej 5y ago
  Tax loss harvesting alone has more than paid the 25 bps fee that Wealthfront charges. It's a no-brainer to me. I'm very happy with Wealthfront.
mbesto 5y ago
boglehead here. Switched off of Wealthfront awhile back. AFAIK they wouldn't outperform a three-fund portfolio. I actually wouldn't mind a platform that uses my brokerage as a backend and lets me do % allocations on 3~4 funds, automatically identifies rebalance opportunities and tax loss harvesting. Basically nudging me like 3~5x per year. I'd pay a flat fee to do that.
- zylepe 5y ago
  I have a google sheet where I keep track of each fund I’ve bought and sold. From there I added a column with gain/loss for each tax lot with remaining shares, and a script that runs once a day to email me if there’s an opportunity for tax loss harvesting. It works pretty well. I like the idea of rebalance opportunity notifications, but it’s harder to get retirement funds into a google sheet with all the automatic contributions that happen…
  - adammenges 5y ago
    Thought about integrating it with Alpacha?

msoad 5y ago

Did anyone get any real beta out of it for a sustainable period?

blobbers 5y ago
beta is correlation to the market (usually refers to SPY correlation). Not sure what you're saying.
- msoad 5y ago
  sorry I meant alpha. oops
im_asl 5y ago
*Alpha

atuladhar 5y ago

Marcus bought HonestDollar, which is in the same space, a while ago, and has rebranded it as "Marcus Invest" * https://www.honestdollar.com/ https://www.honestdollar.com/ * https://www.marcus.com/us/en/invest https://www.marcus.com/us/en/invest

prepend 5y ago

When I looked at it the fees were way to high to justify to bogelheads. What is strange to me about robo advisors is that they are still charging a management fee instead of a flat fee. The algorithms are really basic and don’t have any real time changes so it seems weird to charge 25-50 basis points for what’s basically just an interview and time based rebalancing with some formulas that aren’t really better than existing ETFs. I’ve been expecting this to just be a feature for vanguard and fidelity since the “advise” could just be client side automation rules that nobody wants to build.

xur17 5y ago
Agreed. To me target date retirement funds honestly make more sense for most people.
- tinalumfoil 5y ago
  I'm not sure about that. Targets funds fees are generally a percent not flat, you have less control over your money (which if you're doing a robo-advisor you probably have somewhat bespoke investing requirements) and they only make sense for tax-advantaged accounts (see [1]). Plus, people invest for reasons other than dated retirement targets. [1]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/vanguard-target-retirement-tax-bill-surprise-11642781228 https://www.wsj.com/articles/vanguard-target-retirement-tax-...
teej 5y ago
Tax loss harvesting alone has more than paid the 25 bps fee that Wealthfront charges. It's a no-brainer to me. I'm very happy with Wealthfront.

mbesto 5y ago

boglehead here. Switched off of Wealthfront awhile back. AFAIK they wouldn't outperform a three-fund portfolio. I actually wouldn't mind a platform that uses my brokerage as a backend and lets me do % allocations on 3~4 funds, automatically identifies rebalance opportunities and tax loss harvesting. Basically nudging me like 3~5x per year. I'd pay a flat fee to do that.

zylepe 5y ago
I have a google sheet where I keep track of each fund I’ve bought and sold. From there I added a column with gain/loss for each tax lot with remaining shares, and a script that runs once a day to email me if there’s an opportunity for tax loss harvesting. It works pretty well. I like the idea of rebalance opportunity notifications, but it’s harder to get retirement funds into a google sheet with all the automatic contributions that happen…
- adammenges 5y ago
  Thought about integrating it with Alpacha?