Sharper & Granite

Leveraging the unique power of custom-built financial projection models, Sharper & Granite effectuates investment and wealth management strategies in adherence to the big picture of its clients' lifestyles and ambitions. To Sharper Granite’s clients, custom-built supersedes a black box-like investment solution or projection models that are meager repurposing of widelyused one-size-fits-all financial planning software packages. Whether they are a Silicon Valley magnate or a middle-class individual with little investment acumen, Sharper Granite embraces a personalized high-touch services delivery model. Clients are well-informed about the nuances of the portfolios and investment strategies Sharper Granite undertakes on their behalf. The firm emphasizes educating clients about market behavior, sentiments and trends and how the market works per Nobel laureates and portfolio theory experts in academia.
Pursuing the latest investment theories as opposed to blatantly following market trends or distorting online content, Sharper Granite bases its financial planning and investment strategies on smart diversification, proven drivers for returns, uncorrelated assets, and more.

Running simulations with sophisticated statistical modeling that leverage realistic distribution in stock returns, it looks at how investments can fuel the life clients envision.

Through state-of-the-art modeling tools based on historical data and behavioral finance, Sharper Granite derives academically and fundamentally sound investing methods that sync with the inevitable scenarios in their clients’ lives.

“Sharper Granite runs up to 10,000 Monte Carlo simulations pertaining to realistic financial factors and a range of possible things that can happen in an investor’s lifetime. Correlating stock and bond returns to see how they interplay, we get a highly realistic probability of investment decisions that can meet life events and maintain our clients’ evolving lifestyles, particularly when they approach retirement,” says Tina Herrera, advisor and CMO at Sharper Granite. For instance, in catering to financial planning for retirement, Sharper Granite targets their lifestyle rather than focusing on a dollar amount they'd hit at retirement. The firm goes as far as considering how people tend to travel immediately after retirement and how traveling wanes over time. Accordingly, they develop financial planning that can align with predictable inflation and expenses in travel and hospitality. Healthcare costs is another aspect Sharper Granite considers to ultimately help clients maintain a standard of living that withstands financially challenging and highly probable incidents in their lives.

Sharper Granite's inclination to base its investment philosophies on algorithms and academia stems from Herrera's and fellow advisor Chris Casanega’s engineering background and experience working for NASA. They witnessed firsthand how decision-making based on simulations entailing probabilistic factors can better position project outcomes in the safe zone. Leveraging the MBA prowess they gained later, Herrera and Casanega repurposed the same approach for financial planning and investment.

“There are many professionals in this space who do not have MBAs, let alone engineering degrees, who have the advanced modeling skill sets we do,” says Casanega.

Acting as an investment hand-holder for two decades—much before generic financial planning tools were widely used and during the 2008 recessions—Sharper Granite forges deep trust among its clients, so much so that despite current headwinds with inflation, it seldom has clients calling for portfolio changes. Clients believe the portfolio Sharper Granite created on their behalf can withstand these times.

In this era, with a higher investment acumen among the general population, the value proposition Sharper Granite delivers is highly sought after by investors.