We are not trying to beat the market. We are trying to stop your returns being eaten by costs you can do something about.
What we do not promise
Some people expect an AI system to find the stocks nobody else has noticed — the undervalued one, the one about to move. We do not do that, and we do not claim to. Consistently beating the market is extremely difficult, and a product that implies otherwise is making a promise it cannot keep. [source needed: evidence on the persistence of active-manager outperformance]
What we go after instead
Three costs sit between a portfolio's growth and what an investor actually keeps. Unlike market returns, each is addressable.
- Fund fees — the expense ratios charged inside the funds you hold, which never appear as a bill. We show you what yours are, down to a single fund.
- Tax drag — what you lose to tax that better timing, lot selection and account placement can reduce.
- Advisory fees — what you pay someone to manage the money. [to confirm before publication: we do not model advisory fees today — `product_philosophy.md` § 4]
A basis point of cost avoided is a basis point kept, every year, whatever the market does. That certainty is the reason we start here.
An illustration
The figures below are an illustration, not a projection and not anyone's actual portfolio. They show the shape of the problem: what a plausible set of costs does to a plausible return.
| Line | Rate | Running real return |
|---|---|---|
| Nominal growth, balanced portfolio | 7.00% | — |
| less inflation | −2.80% | 4.20% |
| less fund expense ratios | −0.20% | 4.00% |
| less tax drag (20% of nominal growth) | −1.40% | 2.60% |
| less advisory fee | −1.00% | 1.60% |
Read down the right-hand column: the return left after inflation is more than halved by the three cost lines beneath it — and those three lines are the ones that can be argued with. The growth rate at the top cannot.
Notes on the figures. Inflation here is our own planning assumption, and the app uses your own rate where you have set one. Tax drag is charged on nominal growth rather than on the after-inflation figure, because tax is assessed on nominal gains — one of the quieter ways inflation raises a real tax rate. The growth rate, the expense ratio, the tax rate and the advisory fee are round illustrative numbers, not measurements of anything. [source needed for each; and confirm the inflation wording matches the planning assumption in the app]
What this means for how we work
It is why the product spends its effort on things that look unglamorous: what your funds charge, which account a holding sits in, which lot is sold, when a gain is taken. None of it is a prediction. All of it is arithmetic you are entitled to see.