We know investments are not just money to our clients. They are safety, dreams, quality of life and much more. Nobody can promise results. What we do promise is effort, care and commitment.
We get paid only if we make money for you
Success Fee ONLY
Our fee structure for managed portfolios is quite unique in the industry. We only charge success fee. We have eliminated the management fee completely and only pass-on to clients our direct custody and regulatory costs (usually less than 0.1%). Yes, it means that we get paid only if we make positive absolute returns on the funds you entrust us to manage. What is more, for many of our portfolios we apply the so-called hurdle-rate. We charge success fee only if the return is higher than a certain rate and only on the portion above that rate.
Many fund management companies and brokers offering asset management give kick-backs to distributors for bringing them clients. This is why they tend to charge management fees as high as 3% per year, as they have to include the kick-back. This practice has been made illegal in some European countries. Unfortunately MiFID 2 stopped short of banning it across the EU. It only requires distributors and fund managers to disclose the practice to clients, which they usually do in the small-print of obscure terms and conditions. We have had many offers over the years of people telling us: "Give me a bigger kick-back and I will bring you my clients". Which implies the distributor owns the clients. And we do not believe in that. We think we belong to our clients and not the other way around.
Tell us what your target is, we will help you achieve it
ICM TARGET portfolios
We have developed several investment strategies, for which we believe we are good at. Clients can choose to join one or several of these strategies and move funds freely at no cost between them. We work on a master-account plus sub-accounts basis. When you enter a portfolio management agreement with us, we open a master account for you. Funds in it are invested in liquid and save Treasury bonds. The risk return characteristics are those of a term-deposit in a bank, only you get to withdraw or invest your funds at any time without losing the accrued interest. Then you we can setup one or many sub-accounts for the different investment strategies that we offer.
Key Features:
- Designed to cover the entire spectrum of risk and return – from generating stable income to high-risk/high-return.
- More accessible, because clients can join with a smaller amount (as low as EUR 10,000).
- Clients can also choose to make regular deposits of as little as EUR 250 per month
- Leverage available. Clients can alter the risk-return characteristics of the portfolio they have selected by choosing the level of leverage they want to use. For example, a portfolio of Blue Chip US high-dividend paying stocks can have an expected return of about 5% with no leverage and up to 20% with the use of leverage. This also increases the risk of the investment, but it means clients can temporarily use part of the cash invested to cover current needs.
- dynamic allocation of your funds – we make it very easy to move from one TARGET portfolio to another.
We now offer the following TARGET Portfolios:
- FX Systematic Mechanical Trading Strategy – based on mean-reversion indicator-driven triggers. We apply it for the EUR-USD currency pair. We usually open and close positions within the day, meaning funds are fully available at any time. Investment is based only on a combination of indicators that have been back-tested over 10 years. There are no human emotional reactions when opening or closing a position.
- Balanced Portfolio – composed of 60% Global Treasury and corporate bonds and 40% in selected US stocks, to which we have added dynamic hedging of market movements. The Bonds and Stocks are held long-term while we hedge the market exposure of stocks daily based on mean-reversion technical indicators. This allows us to maintain the very stable risk profile of the portfolio while increasing the potential return by profiting from the short-term "noise" on the markets.
- Global Airlines Long-Short – a portfolio designed to exploit discrepancies in the market valuation of airline stocks, while maintaining a market neutral stance. Stock markets have become less efficient with the increase of passive funds. It means markets often over-react to insignificant news or they tend to incorporate important information with a long delay. This creates opportunities for smaller independent fund managers to exploit these inefficiencies. This approach can work for many sectors. We have started with airlines because of our deeper understanding of that industry; we will soon be expanding the offering to others market segments
For more information on each TARGET category, please click on one of the links at the bottom of this page.
For more sophisticated clients, who need individual solutions
ICM Individual Portfolios
We offer our individual clients the option to design an investment portfolio based on their personal needs and circumstances. The Individual Portfolios are usually based on the following factors related to each client:
- Expected return
- Ability and desire to take risk
- Time horizon
- Liquidity needs
- Taxation
- Special circumstances
Using these factors we design a portfolio for the client with a specific asset allocation (composition of stocks, bonds, treasuries, cash and derivatives). For the actual selection of financial instruments from each asset class we apply a top-down approach – starting from an assessment of the overall economy, then determining which sectors are likely to perform better under our forecast economic conditions and then selecting individual stocks within each sector.