Welcome to this week’s edition of Cape May Wealth Weekly. If you’re new here, subscribe to ensure you receive my next piece in your inbox. If you want to read more of my posts, check out my archive.
Introduction
Dear Readers,
as we head into the final quarter of the year, September has been a full month, on the markets side, on the client side, and on the content side. We really are lucky to be so busy these days - much better than the alternative!
Markets gave us plenty to talk about. Bond yields moved sharply, adding to an already eventful year for fixed income. The Fed raised rates for the first time in three years, despite vocal opposition from the US president - a reminder, if one were needed, that central bank independence still means something, at least for now. And the AI giants chose this moment to publicly warn about the risks of the technology they’re racing to build, which generated its own round of headlines. What a month, indeed.
On our end, we have been digging more intensively into alternatives over the past weeks, meeting private equity fund managers, working through new pitch materials, and looking at options in private credit. On Monday, we hosted an event together with GoldenTree, one of the leading names in credit, which gave us a good opportunity to share our current thinking on the space with a group of clients and guests. We are also continuing to look at opportunities in the hedge fund space, and are slowly starting to build our expertise in infrastructure and real assets as well. If any of those or other alternative investments are on your radar for the year ahead, reach out and we’d be happy to share what we’re seeing.
More broadly, we have been trying to do more across all our content channels this year: this weekly newsletter, Tamara's new tax newsletter (more below), Svea's sports and entertainment newsletter, and a growing number of podcast appearances. If there's a topic you’d like to see us tackle (or anything else we can do better) we’d love to hear it.
All the best,
Jan & the Cape May team
Want to work for Cape May Wealth Advisors?
We are looking for a Junior Relationship Manager (m/f/d) who can support us with a variety of topics such as identifying and approaching potential clients, working on proposals for existing and new clients, managing our quarterly value-adds, or taking charge of new potential acquisition channels. You have the chance to join one of Germany’s fastest-growing wealth management firms as our second employee (after our analyst Svea). You will be involved from Day 1 in shaping our client acquisition strategy, with a clear path towards responsibility for acquisition channels and also your own client book.
You should have 2-5 years in professional experience (ideally in a investing/wealth management role, although we are open for individuals without such a background), and are willing to work in our Berlin office 4-5 days a week.
Interested? Send me an email (or just reply to this one) and I’d be happy to send you more details.
What’s new with Cape May?
Cape May Tax Monthly officially launched as its own newsletter last month. Tamara started it as an occasional format: a newsletter we sent to clients whenever there was something important to put into context - new legislation, proposed reforms, or relevant tax structuring questions.
As demand for these updates grew, we decided to take the next step. Alongside our weekly Cape May Wealth Weekly, we will now also publish our tax-focused newsletter on a regular basis. Each month, Cape May Tax Monthly will cover relevant tax developments, structuring questions, and practical examples from advising high-net-worth individuals and entrepreneurial families.
Cape May Tax Monthly is an extension of our work at Cape May. We founded Cape May because we believe the new generation of entrepreneurs deserves advice built around their individual situation, not standardized products.
September was also a very active month for events. Early in the month, we co-hosted an evening together with Swen Lorenz of Undervalued-Shares.com - hosting a wonderful mix of clients, followers, and partners. The evening brought perspectives you don’t get at the usual finance gatherings. Guests travelled from Prague, Hamburg, and Munich to join us in Berlin.
We also co-hosted an intimate dinner with Pristine Capital, an inception-stage venture firm backing immigrant founders building in the US, bringing together a small group of founders, LPs, and family offices for an informal evening of open conversation and new connections.
And earlier this week, we hosted a lunch at Château Royal together with GoldenTree for a conversation on private credit. The asset class is under pressure: following a number of high-profile corporate insolvencies, investors continue to pull capital from funds that have had to gate redemptions quarter after quarter. But where there is stress, there are also opportunities. GoldenTree joined us in conversation with family officers and clients to give an introduction to private, distressed, and structured credit, and share their current read on where the opportunities lie.
How we served our clients this month
A few highlights from the last weeks:
Designed a family office client’s strategic asset allocation under consideration of their desired split between liquid, semi-liquid, and illiquid assets, also taking into account a personalized projection of expected cash flows from their PE and VC fund portfolio over the coming years
Supported a client with holistic financial planning across a range of topics, including short-term financing options for a real estate purchase, structural and tax considerations around their holding company (with Tamara's input on the tax side), and their philanthropic ambitions
Reviewed asset allocation and implementation proposals for a family office client under consideration of the expected likelihood of complex return/income requirements, resulting in recommendations which bank partners to work with and where changes were still needed
Developed an asset allocation proposal for a client, addressing their portfolio construction and target return, bank setup, and the role of alternatives as diversifiers and potential sources of alpha
Supported a client with their ongoing liquidity planning and management, including renegotiation of terms with their corporate bank as well as money market alternatives
Discussed gold as a capital protection instrument for a client focused on worst-case scenarios, covering aspects such as different storage options, physical delivery options for exchange-traded products such as EUWAX and Xetragold, and the practical considerations involved in such measures (more on this topic in the coming weeks!)
Reviewed an income-oriented portfolio for a client and assessed which investments could be held efficiently at the GmbH level, including certain collectible assets the client is looking to invest in
Conducted a VC fund review for a client, taking into account fee structure, performance of prior funds, as well as insights from our network on the fund’s positioning and certain underlying assets
Researched infrastructure as an asset class and its challenges for a client - an area we are constructive on given its inflation-linked cash flows and diversification properties
Met with several mid- and lower mid-market focused fund of funds managers focused - a segment that has held up comparatively well while the broader PE market has struggled, and where we continue to see interesting opportunities
As always, if any of the above resonates with your situation, don't hesitate to reach out.
Cape May in the News
Jan recently had the opportunity to discuss some interesting questions with Noah Leidinger on the Ohne Aktien Wird Schwer podcast: Do people with €10, €30, or even €100 million actually invest in “ordinary” ETFs and bonds? And what role do hedge funds, private equity, and more complex investment strategies play once you move beyond the portfolios of moderately wealthy private investors? If you haven’t listened yet, you can find the episode on Spotify or YouTube.
Hedge funds have a reputation for being opaque, expensive, and difficult to access - but where do they actually fit in a portfolio? Markus recently joined the Poor Millionaires podcast to discuss exactly that. The conversation covers the different strategies that sit under the hedge fund umbrella - from long/short equity and global macro to quantitative, arbitrage, and multi-strategy funds - and why their role in a portfolio is often less about chasing high returns and more about adding sources of return that behave differently from traditional stocks and bonds. They also get into the practical questions: minimum tickets, liquidity, fees, regulatory eligibility, and the challenge of evaluating managers when much of what they do remains difficult to see from the outside. For anyone looking for a practical introduction to the asset class, it's worth a listen and pairs well with our own Hedge Funds: A Primer from earlier this year. Watch on YouTube or listen on Spotify.
Lastly, Jan recently joined the first episode of Planbar, a new podcast by sabia for modern advisors, covering questions that matter to the next generation of wealth professionals: how to use technology and AI effectively, what the shift from product-focused to holistic advice actually looks like in practice, and how to build and grow an advisory firm. The conversation touches on the value of human advice in an increasingly automated world, why the financial product comes third in Cape May’s advisory process rather than first, and how Jan thinks about the future of the industry. You can find the episode on Spotify and wherever you listen to podcasts. (Disclaimer: Jan is an angel investor in sabia.)
If you have a podcast, a blog, or another type of publication that you think would benefit from our views and network, don't hesitate to reach out.
Cape May Wealth Weekly
In September, we covered a number of topics:
In Playing Different Games, the Wealth Management Edition, we borrowed a framework from venture capital to map out where wealth management in Germany is heading. We argue that the industry is undergoing its own version of the “middle squeeze,” splitting between highly specialized independent advisors and broad-based banking platforms, with a shrinking middle ground that serves neither audience particularly well.
In Simple Investments, Complex Investments, we tackled the tension between the appeal of complex, esoteric investments and the case for radical simplicity - arguing that for most entrepreneurs, their time and edge are better deployed in their own ventures than in trying to out-think liquid markets, and that a well-constructed, cost-efficient portfolio running quietly in the background is often the right answer.
In Commodities: A Primer, the fourth installment of our asset class primer series, we looked at the full commodity complex (energy, metals, agriculture), how they behave across economic environments, and why 2026 has been an unusual year for anyone wondering what role commodities can play in a diversified portfolio.
In Private Real Estate for Affluent Investors, we revisited one of our practical pieces - how much of your net worth should go into a personal residence, how to think about the mortgage question, and whether buying makes sense at all when renting and redeploying the capital elsewhere might serve you better.
In Why Not Just 100% Stocks?, we tackled the most common pushback we hear from affluent investors and rather than just arguing for diversification, followed the logic all the way down: if past return is all that matters, why stop at stocks, why not gold, or Bitcoin? The piece covers volatility drag, path dependency, and why a diversified portfolio can beat 100% equities once you’re drawing an income from it.
And as always, if there's something you'd like us to dig into that we haven't covered yet, we'd love to hear it.
Final Remarks (and Asks)
Two things before we sign off:
We may have a social dinner coming up in Munich later this month and we are planning to host an event in Berlin focused on impact and purpose investing later in the year. If you’d be interested in joining either, let us know. These events are always a good way to bring clients, prospective clients, and partners together to have great conversations (and the food tends to be good too).
We continue to see growing interest from clients in alternatives as portfolio diversifiers - particularly hedge funds, private credit, and niche real assets. If you’d like to hear more about what’s available and how we’re thinking about the space, reach out and we’d be happy to walk you through it.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy the start of fall!
Cape May Wealth Advisors is a Berlin-based wealth management firm focused on helping affluent entrepreneurs find financial independence. If you are interested in learning more about how we can help you, reach out to us via email, and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter.
Disclaimers:
This is a marketing material provided by Cape May Wealth Advisors GmbH ["Cape May"]. Cape May Wealth Advisors GmbH (register number 80179908) conducts investment brokerage as a tied agent within the meaning of Section 3 (2) of the German Securities Institutions Act (WpIG), acting exclusively on behalf of, and under the liability of, Innovative Investment Solutions GmbH (Inno-Invest.de), Heidelberger Str. 44, 64285 Darmstadt, Germany. Inno-Invest is an independent securities institution pursuant to Section 15 WpIG and holds the requisite authorizations from the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin).
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