Bell Investment Advisors

The Bell Team is indeed nice, contributing to the community, to music, theater, sports. They are not as great in their results for your investments. Their «active» investment strategy, the «momentum method,» has fallen behind the S&P 500 for at least the past 10 years. Their claim to have beaten the S&P 500 over time is true only for investors who have been with Bell since the time BEFORE the momentum method. In other words, if you had instead been «passively» investing by choosing S&P-like funds (which isn’t always easy), you would have done much better. What is «much better»? Well, in 2011, for instance, the S&P 500 had the same value at the end of the year as at the beginning, it gained and lost nothing. A typical Bell account lost at least 10%. Which means that your $ 1,000,000 portfolio lost $ 100,000 in 2011, while you friend, passively following the S&P 500, still has his $ 1,000,000.
Why are they not more successful? The momentum method, which is based on data suggesting that up (and down) movements of the market have a certain inertia, they keep going up (or down) for a while. This is a fact one might be able to take advantage of. Bell hasn’t been able to. The reason: they have no reliable method to get on the bandwagon in time, and they’ve left the bandwagon too late too often. These mistakes will not show long in your portfolio because those losers will eventually have been sold and disappeared from your eyes. What stays in your portfolio is, like the grin of the Cheshire Cat, the loss relative to a standard index like the S&P 500.
If you are considering Bell as your advisors, ask them in detail (year by year, not annualized over 15 years!) about their performance relative to a certain standard. For instance for 2013. It was a great year for many indexes, Bell did o.k. for me too, but if I had had the patience to go with «passive investment,» I would have doubled my gains.
Why am I still with them? Lazy. Most people have financial advisors, because they don’t want to bother (or can’t be) managing their portfolio themselves. In addition, only a minority of money managers — rumor has it at 30% — actually beat the indexes, such as the S&P 500. Bell is safely in the majority.

Jim and Bonnie Bell are two of the most wonderful people you will meet. They offer a terrific range of financial services including investing and coaching. They are very transparent with the performance of their fund — something you will not find with many other firms. Jim and Bonnie are deeply involved with the Oakland East Bay Symphony and have raised large sums of money to support this organization, including their Music for Excellence (MUSE) program for Oakland public schools.