Private wealth advice for complex lives.

This is straightforward. For our clients, especially those with complicated personal financial situations, thoughtful advice takes time and effort. We aim to provide a high-touch, personalized experience. If our advisors were managing 200 households, we believe that experience would suffer. Our household cap is how we commit to something larger firms structurally cannot.

We are compensated one way: a percentage of the assets we manage for you, billed quarterly in arrears. No commissions, no product revenue, no referral fees. What you pay appears on your statement, and it is the only compensation we receive for advisory services. Our fee rises and falls with the value of your portfolio, which is deliberate. Your advisory fee is set out in your advisory agreement. Underlying funds carry their own internal expenses, and the custodian may charge certain transaction or account fees, in addition to our advisory fee. See Form ADV Part 2A, Item 5. Hermosa Tax is an affiliated company under common ownership. It is not included in your advisory fee, and if you choose to engage it, it charges its own separate fees.

Yes. We are legally and ethically obligated to act in your best interest at all times. Conflicts that do exist are disclosed in our firm brochure, Form ADV Part 2A. One example: Hermosa Tax is a separate legal entity affiliated with Hermosa Inc. through common ownership, it charges its own fees, and you are never required to use it.

Hermosa Wealth Management has selected Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. (“Schwab”) as a custodian for our clients' accounts. Having Schwab act as custodian for client assets provides us access to a wide range of services that help us serve our clients.

Accounts are registered in your name. Hermosa does not take custody of client assets, and you can verify every position in your account independently of us. That separation is deliberate, because the firm advising you is not the firm holding your assets. See the custody section above for more detail.

Earlier than most people do. Once shares become tradable, timelines compress and options narrow. The decisions that matter most are largely made before liquidity rather than after, including which type of equity you hold, when to exercise, how to manage Alternative Minimum Tax exposure, how to spread a sale across tax years, and how to reduce concentration without abandoning the upside. We work with equity holders across advanced manufacturing, defense and space, robotics and automation, electric mobility, and software, many of them here in the South Bay.

Hermosa Tax is a fully virtual practice offering tax preparation, bookkeeping, and fractional CFO services, with secure document upload, online booking, and remote review, and no office visit required. Having tax preparation in view gives us full transparency for tax planning rather than working from a return we never see. The bookkeeping side is for clients with a side business or a small company, getting the books in order well before tax time instead of during it. It is a separate legal entity affiliated with Hermosa Inc. through common ownership, and because principals of Hermosa Inc. may benefit financially when clients engage it, that affiliation is a conflict of interest. Clients are never required to use Hermosa Tax, and doing so is not a condition of our advisory relationship. Information flows between the two firms only with your written authorization. See our Form ADV Part 2A for additional detail.

We listen first. The opening conversations are about your full picture, including goals, timeline, tax situation, family circumstances, and what you have already built, before we make a single recommendation. From there we build one integrated plan, then implement it across the different accounts in the household rather than one at a time. Review is ongoing rather than annual. We go deeper once a year and revisit whenever your circumstances change.

How are you paid, and is that the only way you are paid? Are you a fiduciary at all times, or only on certain accounts? Who holds my assets? How many households do you serve, and who actually answers when I call? What conflicts of interest do you have, and where are they disclosed? Can I see your Form ADV? We believe any advisor worth hiring will answer all six without hesitating.

A ladder is a series of individual bonds with staggered maturities, built bond by bond rather than bought as a fund. For clients in higher tax brackets, we believe tax-exempt income is often one of the most efficient sources of portfolio yield. We construct ladders around your tax situation, income needs, and time horizon, drawing on thousands of individual fixed income securities. A ladder rewards patience, because it is built to be held rather than traded.