The fee is shown first
Before a portfolio, before a projection. A client who does not know what the desk costs cannot judge what the desk is worth.
REF#015REF#015The desk
A ledger roomwith one nameon it: RockSoft.
RockSoft is a registered investment advisory desk in Austin, Texas. It has been open since 2011, it takes no commission from anyone but its clients, and it stops accepting households at forty.
REF#010 · 412 Congress Ave · The room, at dusk
REF#016Origin
Why the fee is printed before the pitch.
The advisers who opened this desk spent their first years in the industry watching clients sign agreements they had not been shown. The cost was in an appendix; the projection was on the cover. Nothing in that order was illegal and everything about it was backwards.
RockSoft was opened in 2011 to run the other way round. The fee schedule goes out before the portfolio. The model is published with weights. If a position cannot be shown to the person who owns it, the desk does not hold it.
Fourteen years later, the argument for that order is still the same: a client who knows what the desk costs can judge what the desk is worth.
Four constraints.
Not values on a wall — constraints the desk has to live inside, each with a number attached to it.
The book is capped
Forty households. Past that, the desk stops taking clients rather than stops returning calls. The cap is the service level.
REF#016Nothing is sold to you
No proprietary funds, no revenue-sharing shelf, no commission on anything placed. The only payment the desk receives comes from the client.
REF#017Positions are published
The model portfolio is on this page, unredacted, with weights. A holding that cannot be shown is a holding that should not be held.
REF#018REF#019Desk record
The desk, on paper.
- Founded
- 2011
- Desk
- RockSoft, CFA-led
- Registration
- Registered investment adviser
- Households
- Capped at 40
- States
- 34
- Audit
- PwC, annual
- Custody
- SIPC-covered; cold storage for digital
- All-in fee
- 0.85% annually
They sent the fee schedule before the pitch deck.
Mon–Fri, 8:30–17:30 CT · 412 Congress Ave, Austin
Forty households, and the calendar to match. Ask whether there is room.
Call the desk
+1 (325) 632-7837Answered around the clock. Mon–Fri, 8:30–17:30 CT reaches the desk directly.