Product Overview: Zacks Advantage
Zacks Advantage is a premium robo-advisor service designed to simplify and enhance wealth management for high-net-worth individuals and disciplined investors. Here’s a detailed look at what the product does and its key features:
What Zacks Advantage Does
Zacks Advantage is an online investment advisory service that leverages advanced technology and the expertise of Zacks Investment Management (ZIM), a company with over 45 years of experience in the investment field. The platform automatically builds, monitors, and rebalances investment portfolios to align with individual financial goals and risk tolerance.
Key Features
Active Portfolio Management
Unlike fully automated robo-advisors, Zacks Advantage combines automated tools with human expertise to provide active portfolio management. This hybrid approach ensures that portfolios are regularly adjusted and rebalanced based on the Zacks Investment Management team’s risk analysis and market projections.
Personalized Portfolios
The platform creates tailored investment portfolios based on individual risk tolerance, financial goals, and time horizons. It uses the proprietary Zacks Rank system to guide investment decisions, ensuring that portfolios align with market trends and capitalize on growth opportunities.
Diversified Investment Categories
Zacks Advantage offers an extensive array of investment categories, including growth and income, inflation, and defensive assets. The portfolios can include a wide range of asset classes such as US and international stocks, bonds, preferred stocks, international bonds, and floating-rate notes.
Tax-Efficient Investing
The platform prioritizes tax efficiency through advanced tax-loss harvesting capabilities. For accounts worth $50,000 or more, losses are automatically harvested to offset taxable gains, a feature that was previously accessible only to the wealthiest investors.
Competitive Fees
Zacks Advantage charges management fees ranging from 0.35% to 0.70% annually, depending on the portfolio size. Specifically, the fees are:
- 0.70% for accounts from $25,000 to $99,999
- 0.50% for accounts from $100,000 to $249,999
- 0.35% for accounts of $250,000 or more
Ease of Use
The platform is designed for ease of use, starting with a simple sign-up process and a few basic questions to define investment goals and preferences. The system then creates a diversified portfolio and continuously monitors and adjusts it according to the investor’s needs.
Asset Allocation
Zacks Advantage employs a mean variance optimization approach to asset allocation, seeking the highest level of expected return for a given level of risk. The investment committee uses research-driven financial analysis to optimize the allocation of each asset class within the portfolio.
Additional Benefits
- Zacks Advantage Pledge: New users can receive a 100% refund of the management fees in the first year if they are unhappy with the investment services.
- Institutional Intelligent Portfolios™: The platform is powered by this technology, which works in conjunction with active portfolio management to drive performance and manage risk.
In summary, Zacks Advantage is a robust and personalized investment solution that combines the benefits of automated portfolio management with the expertise of human financial analysts. It is particularly suited for high-net-worth individuals and disciplined investors seeking tax-efficient, actively managed portfolios tailored to their financial goals.