We’re not for everyone. We’re for capital with consequences.
Once capital becomes difficult to replace, it deserves a different kind of advice.
We manage the investments. We advise the family. We coordinate everything else.
Shell Capital manages client portfolios held independently, in your name, at Goldman Sachs. They provide custody, trade execution and reporting. We make the investment decisions, as an independent fiduciary and registered investment adviser since 2004.
Skew the payoff in your favor.
Some money is different.
For years, the business, the practice or the career created the capital. Now the capital has a different job: fund a life for decades, hold up through markets no one can predict, and pass to someone else.
At that point, managing a portfolio isn’t enough. The whole financial life has to work together. This is the moment we’re built for.
You sold the business.
The first capital you’ve held that you didn’t control day to day. What it does next is a portfolio decision, not an operating one.
You’re preparing to exit.
The largest asymmetric trade you’ll make, made once. Bring it to us before the terms are set.
Your wealth is one stock.
The upside made you. The downside can undo decades in a quarter.
The portfolio is the paycheck now.
No more contributions. A bad stretch early costs more than the averages show.
You inherited it, or hold it in trust.
Someone else’s life’s work, and a duty that outlasts markets.
It’s decades of earnings.
A practice sale, a profit-sharing plan, a rollover. It doesn’t need to be doubled. It needs to survive what it’s about to see.
Investment management is different here.
Most wealth-management firms are built around advice and an asset allocation. We’re also portfolio managers. The first question we ask about an investment isn’t how much we can make. It’s what happens if we’re wrong.
Every position enters with its exit already defined: the downside decided before entry, in dollars. Losses cut short. Winners given room. Exposure rotated as the evidence changes, not allocated once and left alone.
Rotate, not allocate. Manage the risk you actually have.
You built the capital by taking risk. Now every risk has to earn its place.
- ASYMMETRY® Managed PortfoliosSeparately managed, in your name, with every exit decided before entry.
- Alternative InvestmentsOur own strategies, designed to make money in conditions that hurt a conventional portfolio.
- Portfolio HedgingFor a position you can’t afford to lose and don’t want to sell: the downside defined, the upside left open.
The bigger the loss, the bigger the gain it takes.
| If you lose | You need, just to break even | |
|---|---|---|
| −10% | +11% | |
| −20% | +25% | |
| −30% | +43% | |
| −50% | +100% | |
| −75% | +300% | |
| Yours−50% | +100% | |
On $10 million, a 50% decline is a $5 million loss. Getting back to $10 million takes a 100% gain.
Losses compound against you. Recovery is not symmetrical, which is why drawdown control is the central task. R = L ÷ (1 − L). Arithmetic, not opinion. © Shell Capital Management, LLC
Every wealth decision is a bet.
A business sale can change almost everything at once: the tax, the trusts, the income, the risk. Each decision has a cost you can define in advance and an outcome you can’t. We size the cost and keep the outcome open.
Asymmetric risk and reward. Applied to the whole balance sheet.
Two principals. One strategy. One family.
You don’t meet a salesperson and get handed to someone else. You work directly with Mike and Christi Shell.
Mike Shell
Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Has actively managed money and risk through every boom and crash since the 1990s. Founded Shell Capital in 2004, runs the systems behind ASYMMETRY®, and manages client portfolios personally, alongside his own capital.
Meet Mike
Christi Shell
Director of Private Wealth Strategy
The family’s adviser and wealth manager. Leads the planning around the capital, tax planning included, and keeps your CPA, attorney and trustee working from one plan.
Meet ChristiWhat you can count on.
- Your money stays in your name at Goldman Sachs.Goldman Sachs holds the assets and executes the trades. We make the investment decisions.
- Independent of any bank, broker-dealer or insurer.Advice and management, with nothing to sell.
- The people you read here do the work.No handoff to a team you haven’t met.
- A straight answer on fit.If we’re not right for you, we’ll say so and point you to someone who is.
Goldman Sachs Custody Solutions is an independent custodian. It does not own, supervise, or endorse Shell Capital Management, LLC.
Bring us the consequential decision before you make it.
A business sale. A practice sale. Retirement. Concentrated stock. An inheritance. If we believe we can materially improve the situation, we’ll explain how. If we don’t, we’ll tell you that too.
- 01Write to us.Tell us what changed and what the money needs to do now. Mike or Christi reads it and replies in writing. You don’t have to move anything to have the conversation.
- 02See the whole picture.A private conversation. Then we map the balance sheet, set the portfolio’s objective in dollars, and build the wealth strategy around it.
- 03Manage it, and keep it current.We manage the investments in your name at Goldman Sachs, coordinate the rest with your CPA, attorney and trustee, and keep every decision in writing.
I’ve managed money through every kind of market since the 1990s, and I manage my own the same way I manage yours. If you write, I’ll read it myself.
Mike Shell, Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Shell Capital manages client portfolios held independently, in your name, at Goldman Sachs. They provide custody, trade execution and reporting. We make the investment decisions, as an independent fiduciary and registered investment adviser in Knoxville, Tennessee, since 2004.