Wade Garrett’s legacy fund note
Simulation only. Kellerman & Castle is a fictional firm built for this workshop, operating in no real regulatory regime; nothing here is calibrated to one. Every fund name, date, return figure, and allocation percentage below is invented for this workshop. Nothing in this document describes a real client, a real account, or real financial, legal, or tax advice.
Written by Wade Garrett for the advisory team, as he starts handing his longest-tenured relationships off to people who’ll still be here in another twenty years. This is a historical reference note, not client-facing correspondence - it is a plain factual record of where three older fund vehicles have been, for whoever picks up these relationships next. Nothing below says what anyone should do about any of it; that’s on purpose.
This note is a workshop exercise fixture, written against fictional data for this exercise only. Reusing this format, or the drafting prompts built around it, against a real client’s real document is your own regulated activity, not something this workshop can vouch for.
To the team,
I’ve been telling people I’m stepping back for about two years now, and I finally mean it. Before I hand off the accounts that still know my direct line better than the front desk’s, I want to leave behind something I never actually wrote down anywhere: the real history of the three fund vehicles that make up most of what our longest-tenured individual clients still carry. New advisors keep asking me questions I answer the same way every time from memory. Here’s the memory, in one place.
As of the end of last quarter, the Kellerman Growth Fund’s cumulative return since inception stands at 214.6%. That’s the number worth leading with if anyone asks where the legacy funds stand today.
The Kellerman Growth Fund
This is the oldest of the three and the one most people mean when they say “the legacy fund” without qualifying which one. It launched in March 2004, under continuous management since then with a single portfolio-management transition in 2016.
The 214.6% cumulative return since inception is the headline figure, but the path there was not a straight line. 2008 was the fund’s worst calendar year on record, down 34.1% - a rough one, and not an outlier for an equity fund of that era. The recovery years that followed were uneven, and the fund’s best single calendar year came later than most people guess: up 28.3% in 2013.
Asset allocation as of last quarter’s rebalancing: 71% domestic equities, 21% international equities, and 8% cash and short-term instruments. That mix has drifted only slightly since the 2016 management transition - the prior lead’s approach ran a little heavier on international exposure, closer to 26-27%, before settling to its current range over the two years that followed.
One more figure worth keeping straight because it comes up in almost every one of these handoff conversations: the expense ratio. It sat at 1.15% for most of the fund’s first decade, then dropped to its current 0.89% in a 2016 fee restructuring that applied across the legacy fund family. People sometimes assume that change happened more recently than it did.
The Castle Income Fund
Launched five years after the growth fund, in July 2009, this one exists for clients who wanted something steadier sitting alongside the growth fund rather than replacing it. Cumulative return since inception sits at 76.2% - lower than the growth fund’s number, which is exactly what you’d expect from the different mix, not a sign anything underperformed relative to its own design.
Its strongest single year to date was 2019, up 9.4%. Its allocation has stayed close to its original target for its entire life: 68% investment-grade corporate bonds, 24% government and agency bonds, and 8% cash. Unlike the growth fund, this one never went through a fee restructuring - its expense ratio has been 0.62% since the day it launched, and that consistency is one of the more common questions I get from clients who’ve held it a long time and want to know why the number on their statement never seems to move.
The Legacy Balanced Fund
The newest of the three, launched in January 2012, built as a blended option for clients who wanted one vehicle instead of splitting a position across the other two. Cumulative return since inception is 54.8%. Its allocation runs 55% equities, 40% fixed income, and 5% cash, rebalanced back toward that target on a set schedule rather than adjusted in response to any particular year.
Its only negative calendar year since launch was 2022, down 11.7% - a year that was difficult across most balanced and blended vehicles of similar composition, not specific to how this one was managed. Every other year on record has been positive, though the smallest of the three funds also means the smallest sample size to draw any pattern from.
Where things stand
Roughly a third of the firm’s longest-tenured individual clients still carry a position in at least one of these three funds, and a smaller group carries a position in all three. None of these funds has taken on a new significant allocation in several years - not because anything is wrong with any of them, just because the firm’s current intake process points new relationships toward newer vehicles that didn’t exist when these three launched. That’s a fact about how the firm’s process has evolved, not a comment on the funds themselves.
I compiled every figure above from the firm’s own internal performance ledger through the end of last quarter, cross-checked against each fund’s own historical statements going back to launch. If a client asks about any of these numbers in a meeting, this note should get you the history straight without having to page through two decades of statements to find it. That’s genuinely all this is - history, not a call on what to do next with any of it. Whoever picks up these relationships from me will make that call with whatever’s true at the time, which won’t be the same as what’s true today.
Wade