Our Services
Investment Management
Financial Planning
Wealth Management
Wealth Management combines Investment Management and Financial Planning.
Successful outcomes necessitate attention to both!
Financial Planning
Planning is fundamental to achieving goals. It’s challenging to incorporate all of the complexities of your life with those of the marketplace! We’re here to turn your goals into plans and your plans into accomplishments.
Investment Management
We are independent. Our only compensation is your fee. So only YOUR interests influence our choices. This is genuine objectivity and it produces better long-term returns and is highly underappreciated.
A goal without a plan is just a wish. Real planning is complex! You may have a mix of account types with different taxation, real estate, insurance, a family business, compensation plans, dependent requirements, and different retirement desires. We will synthesize all that complexity into a single clear picture. Your plans will be reflective of your circumstances and will provide meaningful and actionable feedback. Having a plan can provide significant emotional satisfaction and peace of mind. Our goal for you is to turn your goals into plans and your plans into accomplishments.
The best portfolio considers all of your assets, is supported by research, and is reflective of your family’s personal circumstances. After conscientious and thoughtful consultation, we construct a portfolio tailored to your unique needs. We consider more. Portfolios are carefully designed to be fee, tax, and inflation aware and efficient. We have genuine objectivity. We can select the best investments for you. Since our only compensation is your fee, we are not influenced to sell you something nor select investments that benefit us as do so many brand name providers. The economic results of this behavior are widely underappreciated! Without this approach not only are your returns compromised, but the loyalty and duty you deserve are as well.
Retirement Income
Devising a tax minimizing withdrawal strategy and a plan for retirement income can stretch your savings and provide great emotional comfort.
Trust and Estate Planning
You work tremendously hard for the safety and protection of your family. We can help you protect what you have established for your family.
Having a specific plan to optimize what assets to sell, when, and from which accounts to make withdrawals is often overlooked. If you rely upon conventional wisdom it will result in unfavorable outcomes on cash flows and returns through retirement. We plan well in advance of your retirement to optimize your withdrawals, minimize taxes, and avoid the hidden costs of poor planning and lost opportunities. We translate your portfolio into something you do understand – how much you can spend.
You work really hard for your family and even while shouldering a larger tax burden, the wealth created from your hard work is taxed AGAIN! If you depart this life wealthy, your family must pay an additional 40% tax. We can help you protect what you have created for your family. There are many flexible tools available to achieve tremendous tax savings with a few years and thoughtful planning.
Tax Minimization
Minimizing taxes is a cornerstone of our advisory work. Tax minimizing opportunities are typically hidden to you and remissly ignored. We don’t fail to act. A dollar saved is a dollar earned.
What We Don’t Do
What we do is important, but what we don’t do is equally important.
Tax reducing opportunities are typically not apparent to clients, which unfortunately offers an incentive for the remiss Advisor to ignore them even though failing to act is costly to you. We reveal those opportunities to you and turn them into tangible benefits for you rather than hidden opportunity costs. Additionally, the tax implications of poor investment selection are also hidden to you and more costly than you may expect. We carefully design each portfolio to be fee, tax, and inflation aware and efficient.
It’s rare to find a firm willing to issue a list of what they don’t do – consider this a list of items you may want to investigate with other firms. We hope this improves your understanding of our industry and fosters more trust in us. Please follow the link to learn what we don’t do.
Financial Decision Support
Everyone has biases and there is no shortage of distractions and confusions that conspire to prevent us from making good decisions. Whether it’s an investment or a life decision – we are here to help you.
Advanced Portfolio Strategies
The term conjures thoughts of increased complexity and risk. This is not the case. We deliver advanced portfolio services, rarely offered, in order to improve your outcomes and reduce risk and taxes.
Without the assistance of Advisors, investors often make choices that impair their returns and jeopardize their long-term objectives. Influenced by capital market performance – both good and bad, emotional decision making, and performance chasing – investors can benefit greatly from professional stewardship. Research suggests this may be the most valuable aspect of the advisory relationship. We want our knowledge, experience, and disciple to be benefits for you.
These services are not widely offered among advisory businesses, yet the benefits are considerable and perceptible. We offer option strategies, tax loss harvesting, and tax gain harvesting among other solutions with the goal of creatively and proactively converting your circumstances into tangible benefits for you. Importantly, this does not mean more risk or complexity in your portfolio. It requires specialized knowledge to incorporate these strategies and although potential dangers lurk, when applied properly they can generate income, reduce risk or taxes, offer more comfort with a transaction, and promote discipline.
About Us
Professional stewardship delivered with genuine care.
Jeff Fang, CFP
Is the Managing Principal of Aqua Capital Advisors. After seven years as an Assistant Vice President and Wealth Management Advisor at Merrill Lynch, Jeff founded Aqua Capital Advisors to provide truly individualized investment advice and advisory services to individuals and their families. Prior to Merrill Lynch, Jeff was a strategic leader at a number of Silicon Valley companies focused on semiconductor and data infrastructure.
Jeff graduated from the University of Alabama with a BS in Electrical Engineering receiving distinction from Eta Kappa Nu, the Engineering Honors Society. He is a Certified Financial Planner™ certificant. An avid soccer player, Jeff and his wife, a physician at UCLA, are the proud parents of three children.
Wendy Lee
Joined Aqua Capital Advisors after working at Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management. Prior to Merrill Lynch, Wendy was part of the international business development group at OffRoad Capital, a financial services firm that provided accredited investors with the opportunity to invest in emerging companies through the company’s innovative private capital marketplace, where she was instrumental in establishing the firm’s joint venture in Asia.
Wendy is fluent in Korean and received her BA from Cornell University. Wendy and her husband are proud parents of two children.
John P. DeFonso, CFA, CPWA®
Has been in the wealth advisory business for over 20 years providing advice, investment management, and planning. John is a Chartered Financial Analyst® charterholder and is also a Certified Private Wealth Advisor® designee. John serves on the Wealth Management Advisory Board and the FinTech Advisory Board for the 2400 member CFA Society of Los Angeles. He is also a member of the Wealth Management League an invitation only, idea sharing, wealth management network. John earned his BS in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He enjoys traveling, having visited 60+ countries, golfing, skiing, and backcountry hiking. He and his wife, a partner at Gibson Dunn and Crutcher, are sometimes proud parents of two usually good children.
