When times get rocky, he stays calm
Long-term focus helps when stock market turns into roller coaster
Leo Kelly’s clients at Verdence Capital Advisors are mostly business owners, corporate executives, entrepreneurs and athletes, many whose wealth exceeds $10 million.
They seek advice from the Hunt Valley-based financial advisory firm on decisions such as selling businesses, setting investment strategies, making choices regarding stock options, passing on wealth and establishing a legacy through philanthropy.
“Wealthy clients want to make money and build wealth, but mostly they want to preserve the wealth they’ve worked so hard to build,” said Kelly, 48, CEO and partner in Verdence, which took its name from “veritas,” Latin for truth and independence. Earlier this month as the stock market plunged, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbling to its largest point decline ever, Kelly said he offered the same advice he has given during the past year’s high flying market.
“Be disciplined, be calm,” he said. “The market tries to make you emotional, and that’s why historically investors do so poorly. They buy high, and they sell low because they become afraid. … We are very long-term-focused and very calm. We don’t get emotional on the markets.”
Kelly and his team have been building the wealth management business since 2012. That’s when he left Merrill Lynch in Hunt Valley, where he had worked since 1999, including through the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis when Bank of America bought the retail brokerage for $50 billion.
Deciding to leave the world of big banks and brokerages in 2012, he and six others at Merrill Lynch joined HighTower Advisors, becoming an independent firm in Sparks with $600 million under management. Last July, the group split off from Hightower and opened their own firm, which now has 27 employees and offices in Hunt Valley and Tysons Corner, Va.. Verdence manages more than $2 billion in assets..
Kelly, who grew up in Trenton N.J., said he always had a fascination with the stock market and used to pore over stock tables in the newspaper as a kid.
He remembers thinking, “If I could buy these at $20 and they’d go back to $50, that would be great.”