The market has two speeds.
We manage to the faster one.
Since the mid-2010s, high-growth software and technology businesses have compounded on a different clock than the broad market — faster revenue growth, higher margins, and a very different ride. Bull Run runs four separately managed accounts built around that difference: one research discipline, four tolerances for volatility, every position picked by one manager, and the whole record published daily — gross and net, declines included.
Performance figures on this page are computed in your browser from Bull Run’s published daily return database each time the page loads. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Two universes, drawn on one axis.
This is the argument the whole firm is built on. High-growth software and the broad index have not behaved like one market — they have compounded at different speeds, with different declines, on different clocks. The chart below is live from Bull Run’s published daily database: the flagship Equity Innovation strategy against the S&P 500, the Nasdaq-100, and the BVP Emerging Cloud index. Add the other three strategies to see where each one lives between those worlds. Declines are not cropped out; the deepest one on this chart is real.
Strategy returns reflect the selected fee basis; benchmark indexes are always shown gross, before any fees, and cannot be invested in directly. Windows that begin before a strategy’s live date include backtested history and are labeled as such. Scroll on the chart or drag the Zoom Range to change the window.
| Series | Cumulative return | Value of $10,000 | Annualized | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Two decimals, always. A drawdown is only called recovered when the prior peak has actually been regained.
View the public dataset ↗Private-market discipline, in public companies.
Bull Run starts from an observation most portfolios are not built around: a small set of businesses compounds meaningfully faster than the market they trade in. They grow revenue at rates the index cannot match, they carry software-grade gross margins, and their products become more valuable as they scale. Over a full cycle, business performance becomes investment performance — and businesses performing on a different level deserve to be owned differently.
So we own them the way a private-markets investor would. Concentrated positions rather than diversified lists. Multi-year holding periods rather than quarterly rotation. Underwriting the business — its growth, its margins, its leadership, its balance sheet — rather than trading the ticker. The flagship Equity Innovation strategy applies that discipline in full; the other three strategies apply the same research at progressively lower tolerances for volatility, so that the whole suite can serve one household from its most aggressive dollar to its most conservative.
The trade is named out loud: the fastest compounding we run comes with the deepest declines we run. Everything else on this page exists to make holding it possible.
That is also why this is a suite and not a single product. Very few investors should own only the flagship. Most should own it in a size they can genuinely hold through a decline — surrounded by strategies built to steady the ride. Section 03 explains how a separately managed account actually works and why the structure matters; Section 04 shows how the four fit together.
The index, sorted by growth.
If the argument above is right, it should be visible in the index itself. Every S&P 500 company below is plotted by the revenue growth analysts expect from it over the next year. The cliff is the whole thesis: a small group of businesses is doing nearly all of the growing, and the index owns them alongside everything else.
Forward revenue growth is the consensus analyst estimate for each company’s next fiscal year — an estimate, subject to revision, not a result. Snapshot taken August 10, 2026; 498 of the 503 S&P 500 constituents had published revenue estimates and market values at that time, and the remaining five are excluded rather than assumed. Growth is not the same thing as quality, and this chart does not claim it is — it shows where growth actually sits inside the index. Bands correspond to the revenue-growth targets of the four Bull Run strategies.
Three parties, deliberately separated. The manager who picks the securities is not the company holding them — that separation is the structural protection.
Everybody knows ETFs and mutual funds. Almost nobody knows what an SMA is.
It is the structure every Bull Run strategy is delivered in, and the one most people have never had explained to them. It is worth five minutes, because the difference is not a technicality. It changes who controls your tax bill.
A separately managed account is a portfolio of individual securities, held in an account with your name on it, managed by a professional under a stated strategy. You own the shares themselves — not units of a fund that owns the shares. That single structural difference is where every practical advantage below comes from.
What you actually own
Same four strategies, three different wrappers. Click through and watch what lands in your account.
Side by side, honestly
| Mutual fund | ETF | Separately managed account | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you own | Units of a pooled fund | Shares of a pooled fund | The individual securities, in your name |
| Whose tax decisions you inherit | Every other shareholder’s | Mostly your own | Only your own |
| Surprise capital-gains distributions | Common — even in a down year | Rare; in-kind redemption scrubs most of them out | None — there is no pool to distribute from |
| Harvest a loss on a position that’s down while the portfolio is up | No | No — you hold one line item | Yes — position by position |
| Exclude a company, or hold around a concentrated legacy stock | No | No | Yes |
| Choose which tax lots to sell, or gift the most-appreciated ones | No | No | Yes |
| Move existing stock in without selling it first | No | No | Often yes, in kind |
| Intraday trading | No — priced once at the close | Yes | Positions trade during the day; the account is managed, not traded by you |
| Typical minimum | Low | One share | Higher — $250,000 at Bull Run |
| Where it genuinely wins | Access to strategies with no other wrapper | Small accounts, retirement plans, pure simplicity | Taxable accounts of size, where control is worth more than convenience |
General structural comparison, not tax advice. Bull Run is not a tax advisor — your accountant should weigh in on anything specific to you.
The part that’s hard to believe until you see it
Two situations that happen constantly, and what each wrapper does to you in them. Set your numbers.
Illustrative, using ordinary market behavior: a fund distribution of 9% of assets in a losing year, and a portfolio up 12% on the year in which a quarter of the positions are nonetheless down an average of 18%. Bull Run does not publish position-level returns; these are representative figures, not a track record. Not tax advice.
The bill you didn’t trigger
Your mutual fund is down 6% on the year. Other shareholders redeem, the manager sells appreciated holdings to pay them, and the realized gains are distributed to whoever is still holding — you. You owe tax on a gain you never took, in a year you lost money.
An ETF would usually spare you this one. The next one it cannot.
The harvest you can’t reach
Good year: the strategy is up 12%. Underneath it, some positions are down anyway — that always happens. In a fund or an ETF you own one line item that is up, so your harvestable losses are exactly zero. In an SMA you own each position, so the losers can be harvested while the strategy stays intact.
Losses offset gains elsewhere in your return and carry forward if unused.
- Below the minimum. A separately managed account needs enough positions to be worth managing individually. Under a few hundred thousand dollars, a low-cost ETF is usually the sharper tool, and we will say so.
- Inside a 401(k) or most employer plans. SMAs generally aren’t available there. That is a structural fact, not a preference.
- In a tax-deferred account, most of the advantage above disappears — there is no tax bill to control. The reason to choose an SMA there is the strategy itself, not the wrapper.
- If you want zero complexity. An SMA means more holdings, more tax lots, and a longer statement. Some people simply don’t want that, and it is a fair reason.
We would rather tell you this here than have you find it out later. In a taxable account of real size, though, the control is usually worth more than the convenience.
Four strategies, one structure.
Every Bull Run strategy is a separately managed account custodied at Charles Schwab, in your name, with a $250,000 household minimum. You see every holding and every trade the day it happens. We direct the trading; Schwab holds the assets; the securities are yours. The next section is what those four strategies actually are.
You have read the case. Now hear it.
Everything above is the argument on paper. Below it is the same argument told out loud, chapter by chapter, in the portfolio manager’s own words — what the strategy owns, why those businesses, how it behaves in a decline, and what it costs. Start with the 35-second version, or open the full story for whichever strategy you are weighing.
Eleven chapters per strategy, narrated. Choose Quick Tour for the shape of it, or Full Detail for the whole argument including fees. The player runs on the same live data as this page, so the numbers you hear are the numbers above.
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One philosophy, four tolerances for the ride.
The four strategies are not four ideas. They are one idea held at four levels of aggression — from the counterweight built to steady a portfolio, to the flagship built to compound as fast as we know how. Every client portfolio is assembled from these four sleeves, plus bonds where the mandate calls for them.
Return objectives are long-term, full-cycle targets — objectives, not forecasts, and not guarantees.
The standing models, at a glance.
Most clients hold a blend. These are the standing models — each a fixed mix of the four strategies plus a bond sleeve where the mandate calls for one. Live figures below are annualized since January 2023 and update with the fee selector; the full treatment, with a chart for every model, is in Section 08 →.
Four portfolios, each with a story worth telling.
Each card below is the whole strategy in one place: what it owns, what it is measured against, the trade it makes, and its live book. And when a card interests you, expand it — a miniaturized fact sheet opens right here, with the objective, the strategy, the key facts, the live risk numbers, and every single holding, so the conversation never has to leave this page.
Every strategy is measured on two axes.
One benchmark is never the whole truth. Each Bull Run strategy carries a return benchmark and a drawdown analog — the index whose declines it should feel like on the way down. The table scores both, live, for whatever window and fee basis you have selected above. Strategy returns follow the fee selector; benchmarks are always gross.
| Strategy | Return benchmark | Live · this window | Drawdown analog | Live max drawdown |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Strategy lines follow the fee basis; benchmarks are always gross. Drag the Zoom Range or scroll on the chart to change the window.
The risk ledger, in the open.
Volatility and drawdowns are computed over the selected window; capture ratios use month-end monthly returns and need a multi-year window to be meaningful. Low Volatility captures less of the up months than of the down months — it is a stabilizer by design, not downside protection, and we say so rather than implying otherwise. A drawdown is only marked recovered when the series has actually regained its prior peak.
The standing models, every one of them charted.
These are not illustrations — they are the standing allocations Bull Run actually runs, computed daily from the same database as everything else on this page. Sleeves are blended gross, with the bond sleeve marked to a live high-yield bond index; the fee you select is then applied to the whole blend. The S&P 500 rides along, gross and dashed, in every view. None of these five has to be your mix. Move the sliders in the Portfolio Proposal generator — the same engine, the same data — and build your own allocation, then take the finished PDF with you.
Model windows that begin before a sleeve’s live date include backtested sleeve history. Growth-of-$250,000 lines start at the first date every sleeve in that model has data. Return objectives are targets, not forecasts; allocations shown are the standing models and are tailored per client in practice.
What a 20% objective actually looks like.
Percentages hide their own meaning. This is the same arithmetic that built the flagship’s case, applied to your numbers: pick a strategy objective, set an amount and a horizon, and see the curve — against a 12% comparison line, and net of the exact fee tier you would actually pay.
Objectives are long-term targets, not forecasts or guarantees. The comparison rate always stays gross — the fee is only ever charged against the Bull Run objective, never against the thing it is measured by.
Don’t take the page’s word for it. Run it yourself.
Everything above has a tool behind it. Each one runs on the same live database as this page — open them in a new tab and pressure-test the whole argument with your own numbers.
Project a full financial plan on real strategy history — contributions, withdrawals, timelines, and the fee, all in one picture.
Click here for itBuild any blend of the four strategies and bonds, then backtest it across 18 years of daily data — drawdowns, taxes, and asset location included.
Click here for itUpload a statement or type three numbers and build a complete, personalized proposal PDF — the same document Chris prepares for clients.
Click here for itSee the cost before the conversation.
One graduated fee, published in full. Slide to any account size — or type it — and see the blended rate and the dollars, tier by tier. The rates below are the contractual schedule: the one set of numbers on this page that is hardcoded on purpose.
Billed quarterly, in arrears, on average daily balance. No commissions, no product sales, no performance fees — the advisory fee is the entire compensation.
| Tier | Rate | Your dollars in tier | Fee |
|---|