Services
Tre Api Wealth’s primary strategy is to preserve and grow our clients’ families’ wealth for future generations. This is achieved by analyzing the risks and tax implications of each investment, as well as how the selection of investment choices diversifies our clients’ portfolios to mitigate the damage that can be caused by concentrated investment positions.
Our goal is not to impress you with an office, but to pass on cost savings in the form of some of the lowest fees in the business.
We are not commission based; our low fees are based on your assets that we manage.
Louis Barberini the firm became registered as an investment adviser in 2021.
Download Lou Barberini’s ADV Part 2A Form
Download Lou Barberini’s ADV Part 2B Form
Investment Services
Tre Api Wealth acts as a fiduciary and invests our clients’ assets in individual companies, and exchange traded funds (ETF’s) when it is necessary to gain diversified exposure to a specific sector. We also invest in treasuries and corporate bonds when the interest rate environment supports doing so.
We don’t chase fads or momentum stocks. We are earlier adopters, and our investment decisions are based on research from Value Line and Morningstar services, and our analysis from content in Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, and Grant’s Interest Rate Observer.
But not only do we devour these publications, we often are quoted in them.
Tax Coordinated Investment Decisions
In 1996, Lou challenged conventional wisdom with an article in the AICPA Planner documenting how a vanilla index fund placed investors in a better after-tax position than a tax-deferred variable annuity insurance product—even though the insurance product’s entire design was to minimize taxes. It is this type of forward thinking and analysis that benefits our customers.
Asset Titling
Because of our expertise in taxation and financial planning, we provide valuable assistance to our clients in the titling of their assets to minimize estate and probate taxes, while maximizing the step-up in basis provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. Four simple words added to the title of your accounts can save you tens of thousands of dollars.
“Community Property” Can Be More Expensive
by Lou Barberini | Feb 2, 2020
Roth vs. Traditional
We educate both our clients and their grown working children on the benefits of a Roth 401k versus a traditional 401k. An article Lou wrote was the source of the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig’s June 10, 2019 article.
Insurance Analysis
While we do not provide insurance services, we evaluate and provide transparency to our clients on the insurance products being marketed to them. San Francisco public employees have access to a voluntary and supplementary pension plan called “deferred comp” that is held within an insurance product. In 2009, it was Lou that uncovered that over $100 million of the $700 million in the least volatile investment, the Stable Value option, had evaporated because of plan administrator investments risky derivatives.
The loss of investors’ money was explained by Jaqueline Doherty’s Barron’s article.