How about we draw straws and the longest and the shortest both win?

Charles Schwab has recently been on the search for a director to lead the firm’s long-short separately managed account initiative, someone responsible for building a team focused specifically on long-short SMAs and creating companywide coordination for the business, according to a job posting. Schwab did not respond to questions, including if the position has been filled.

The move speaks to a broader push into the strategies, which are gaining traction as wealthy investors look for ways to diversify concentrated stock positions without triggering massive tax bills.

The Long and Short of It All

Though still a small portion of its business, long-short strategies are an area that performed exceptionally well in the second quarter for Schwab and helped drive overall company revenue 21% higher year over year.

Schwab is not alone in its push. The strategies are gaining greater attention for multiple reasons. Some advisors and clients are seeking new avenues for alpha. Others are looking for diversification that isn’t fixed income. Plus, companies like SpaceX, and soon, Anthropic and OpenAI, are delivering mega-IPOs, turning on-paper millionaires into actual millionaires in need of tax-loss harvesting tools:

• Neuberger Berman added long-short tax managed strategies to its Custom Direct Indexing platform in June.
• WisdomTree launched the WisdomTree Efficient Long/Short US Equity Fund (WTLS), an ETF that combines broad S&P 500 exposure with a long-short equity overlay, in January.
• Invesco has also been building up its long-short SMA capabilities.

Despite Schwab’s push into the products, it did recently introduce limitations to the strategies. In April, the firm began capping long-short SMAs at 30% of an advisor’s total assets held at Schwab, alongside new leverage caps and account minimums. Fidelity made similar moves at the end of last year, indefinitely blocking RIAs from opening and funding new accounts.

Not Right for Every Client. Advisors working with high-net-worth clients and employees of huge companies that just went public are recognizing the benefits of long-short SMAs. “The standard wirehouse model of a hyper-diversified ETF basket just gets you the market average and all the mediocrity that comes with it,” said Erik Kratz, CIO at Arena Private Wealth. “Advisors have to justify their fees more than they used to, and long-short is one of the tools that actually does that, instead of leaning entirely on financial planning.” However, he also notes just how complex they are. “This requires real ongoing management, not a model you set and forget,” he told Advisor Upside.

Alex Caswell, founder of Wealth Script Advisors, said roughly 20% of his clients use the strategies since he works exclusively with tech professionals. He added that advisors really need to understand active management before allocating to long-short strategies. “For those who exclusively believe in passive investing, they need to have confidence that this strategy can add value to them rather than deteriorate returns,” he said.

Why spend time and money on marketing when AI can do it for you?

Website visits and engagement are increasingly driven by artificial intelligence as prospects are routed to wealth management firms through large language models like ChatGPT, according to a new Snappy Kraken study. The rate of conversion, or a firm’s success in turning potential customers into new clients, also increased, but one source was more important than the rest: websites. Website-driven conversion doubled in the fourth quarter last year compared with the same quarter in 2024. Robert Sofia, CEO of Snappy Kraken, said the increase is due to both AI discovery and client trust in the nascent technology, which leads them to convert faster after a recommendation. It could be an area of opportunity for advisors searching for organic growth.

“[Clients have] already been doing research with answer engines, learning, asking questions. Context is being gathered, and then AI makes a recommendation,” Sofia said. “By the time they come to the advisor’s website, they’ve already determined that they need a financial advisor, so it’s higher-intent traffic that’s more educated and therefore converting faster.”

CC Me

Even though websites are all-important for advisor marketing — according to the report, website visitors increased 10% year-over-year, and website form submissions grew 110% — the pathway from potential client to converted customer is less linear than before, Sofia said. While in the past, a marketing campaign might lead directly to a website and then a client meeting, leads can now be generated anywhere: social media, direct emails, AI, podcasting. While email campaigns are good by themselves, adding certain elements (making them timely, for example, or sending follow-ups to keep people engaged) increases the client conversion rate. Firms can also use AI to generate customizable email templates, Sofia added. This way, advisors can avoid using AI to interact with new clients directly, which can turn them away, particularly if they’re wary of the technology. “If you unleash AI to just interact directly with your clients and prospects, that’s far too great of a risk,” he said.

Some other findings from the Snappy Kraken report include:

• While many advisors adopt emails to make new clients aware of their services, only 23% reported regularly following up with those clients in subsequent emails to keep them engaged.
• Advisors sent 7% more campaign emails in 2025 than in 2024, and total link clicks rose 10%.

Get Connected, For Free! Implementing multiple sources of lead generation across social media, websites, email marketing campaigns and more increases overall reach and likelihood of success, Sofia said.

“When firms had multiple types of strategies running: in other words, landing pages, a newsletter, a podcast, a website, all these different things … they were generating more landing page views, more link activity and higher engagement just by connecting them,” he said. “The more you’re connecting things, getting that data, and then being able to act on it programmatically instead of manually, it’s a multiplier.”

O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frighted thee,

That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down

And steep my senses in forgetfulness?

This oft-quoted passage from William Shakespeare’s famous history play Henry IV sees an exhausted and guilt-ridden King Henry IV envy how easily his subjects sleep while he, burdened by his crown, suffers from severe insomnia. The Bard wrote the scene as a warning about the heavy weight of ill-gotten gains, but as it turns out, there’s also a message in there for modern-day retirees.

“There’s an increasing amount of scientific evidence pointing to the importance of good sleep hygiene to cognitive health in retirement,” said Mike Lynch, managing director of applied insights at Hartford Funds. “Your portfolio matters, of course, but your most important asset is your brain. We think more advisors should be helping their clients adopt a lifestyle that supports healthy brain aging.”

Bye Bye, Brain Trash

Hartford Funds recently tapped neuroscience researcher Marc Milstein to build a client education initiative called “Retain Your Brain.” The program provides science-based lifestyle strategies to help investors protect cognitive health, lower dementia risks and navigate longevity planning. “It’s been such an interesting collaboration,” Lynch said. “The big message for advisors out there is that the costs of an unhealthy brain can be significant.”

By the numbers:

• The average lifetime cost of dementia is about $393,000, per data from the Alzheimer’s Association.
• Costs include medical expenses, caregiving, home modifications, lost income, legal fees and end-of-life care.

So, what can retirees do to help them avoid brain-related health problems? “Maintaining close social connections and staying physically active are a big deal, but consistently getting good sleep is actually on top of the list,” Lynch said.

Modern science has demonstrated that brain cells are like a bustling city, and just as a city gets dirty, the brain does too, filling with residual waste from chemical reactions, environmental toxins and damaged cells. Normally, this “brain trash” is flushed out during periods of deep sleep, but if one frequently suffers from poor sleep, cardiovascular disease or acute brain trauma, the trash can build up. That buildup, in turn, heightens the risk of both mild cognitive decline and more serious diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Healthier for Longer. No amount of social connection or REM sleep can completely eliminate the risk of mental decline, but the science suggests healthy habits can meaningfully postpone its onset. “If there’s anything we can do to maintain a healthy brain, we should be interested in doing that, both for financial reasons and for quality of life,” Lynch said. “People may even want to consider working longer to remain connected and give themselves additional time to save and invest as a hedge against the cost of cognitive decline later on.”