Investment

If you’re looking for a troublesome industry, look no further than the investment industry.

What a mess.

For years, I had my money under the management of Bruce Kagan at Gluskin Sheff. It was one of those places with fancy offices and good-looking secretaries—just enough gloss to distract you from how poorly your money was actually being managed.

One of my biggest frustrations as an investor was the low-quality financial reporting that firms like Bruce’s provided. These reports seemed deliberately opaque, covering up poor performance under the guise of ‘proprietary secrets’ and leaving investors in the dark.

As an investor, I found it nearly impossible to distinguish between the actual performance of my portfolio and the story my advisors were telling me about my investments. In hindsight, it’s obvious:

The results were poor.

The system was built on trust—a trust I now realize was misplaced. When it comes to business relationships involving money, trust should not be the cornerstone. Instead, we should be moving towards zero-trust relationships, enforced by technology that holds advisors accountable. This approach reduces the transaction costs of diversifying your investments across multiple institutions and lets investors finally see what’s really happening with their money—relying on objective, transparent numbers and first principles instead of marketing gloss.

This is where screen capture technology could change the game. With the right tools, the power dynamic shifts—from institutions to investors.

I forgive Bruce... mostly. In some respects, he’s just another cog in a system where investment advisors are forced to trade on the borrowed trust of large institutions—RBC, Gluskin Sheff, Onyx, and others who buy and sell reputations as if trust can be transferred on a balance sheet. That kind of commoditized trust doesn’t inspire much faith from me.

Flow Money offers a completely different model. Instead of opaque reporting, clients can transparently track portfolio allocations, and implement the same investment strategies using whatever platform they choose.

Historical positions and performance data would be stored in markdown and Git, providing an accurate history and meaningful insight into portfolio performance—something investors can actually trust. The real power comes through automation. When you take things to the extreme, you change the rules of the system.