Passive investment approach is so 30 years ago, Drawbridge strategist says

Transforming a systematic process into a company built on efficiency has Lee’s Summit-based Drawbridge Strategies ready to disrupt the world of finance, said Tim Fortier.

“A product is a means to an end, not the end itself. What is necessary is better investor education on the process behind the product,” said Fortier, Drawbridge Strategies CIO.

Built on Fortier’s 30 years in the financial trenches, Drawbridge Strategies — a portfolio building operation, comprised of three Fortier-fronted companies that includes Portfolio Cafe and Expectancy Distributors, LLC — uses exchange-traded funds and stocks to create quantitative models for investors, advisors, financial publishers, and institutions — simplifying a decades-old process, that’s become inefficient in the modern world of finance in the process, Fortier explained.

“Traditional, passive approaches, that are now so popular, are going to disappoint investors in the years to come,” he said. “What has worked for the last 30 plus years is not going to work the same way. Rates are rising, there is systemic leverage everywhere you look, and stock valuations are again at extremes.”

A realization that the industry is fueled by innovation led Fortier and his wife — Catherine Fortier, CEO — to ultimately form Drawbridge Strategies, which can be thought of as a bridge gapping tool for investors, he added.

Fruit of the Fortier’s labor, the company’s intellectual property has been newly licensed to an exchange traded fund (ETF), set to launch Dec. 19 on the New York Stock Exchange.

“As investors become unstuck in their old ways, we will be there educating them and providing solutions that work as expected,” Fortier said of what’s to come in the company’s near future. “We have a second ETF planned for Q219, a digital platform, and a suite of insurance and note products.”

Observed as a step forward for the Lee’s Summit-headquartered company, Fortier said his experience with the 1990s market boom, witnessing the tech bubble, and working through the 2008 market crash and recovery have uniquely molded him for process solutions development.

“We are seeing more AI and references to smart learning approaches [institutions have been doing this for years],” he said of Drawbridge Solutions role in the rapidly changing finance industry. “[Part of our mission] is to give investors a better way to invest — a way that utilizes smarter approaches.”