Our Three Takeaways From Our Interview With Joe Smith ("Direct Indexing, Risk and Culture")
Joe Smith, CFA, has been many things in his career — CIO, Deputy CIO, ETF product expert, portfolio-construction specialist, entrepreneur, and now Co-Founder and CIO of Parti Pris. I’ve had the privilege of working closely with Joe in the past, and what has always stood out is his disciplined decision-making. He takes complex ideas — risk, personalization, tax sensitivity, investor behavior — and makes them actionable.
Our recent conversation on Invest Well, Be Well reinforced why Joe is one of the most thoughtful voices in our industry today. Here are our three takeaways.
1. Wise Investing Starts With Process — and Ends With Personalization
Joe believes the core principles of wise investing haven’t changed: stay invested, stay diversified, and stay disciplined. But the implementation of those principles is entering a new era.
As portfolios shift from account-level construction to household-level personalization, advisors can finally design strategies around a family’s total financial picture — risk, taxes, cash flows, concentration, preferences, even legacy goals. Joe’s firm, Parti Pris, is building the tools to make that simple, scalable, and consistent.
His point is straightforward:
Personalization isn’t customization for its own sake. It’s a better way to keep investors aligned with their goals over decades.
And that alignment — not market timing or security selection — is where long-term results are won.
2. Risk Management Is the Quiet Superpower
Joe has always been a disciplined investor, but what stood out in this conversation was how he thinks about practical risk management.
Risk isn’t volatility or fancy math. It’s anything that causes an investor to abandon their plan. That could be a drawdown, a large tax bill, a concentrated position, or simply a portfolio that no longer matches a client’s values or cash-flow realities.
Joe emphasized three forms of risk that advisors must solve at the household level:
- Tracking error risk — staying aligned with the investor’s plan, not a benchmark
- Tax drag — silently eroding returns for years
- Behavioral risk — the biggest risk of all
His takeaway:
Good risk management isn’t about forecasting. It’s about preparing.
3. Culture Is the Edge — for Firms and for Families
One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was Joe’s perspective on culture. He sees it as the ultimate differentiator — and not in a soft, abstract way.
Culture shows up in:
- How investment teams make decisions when the data is noisy
- How advisors communicate during stress
- How consistently firms serve clients over full cycles
Strong culture produces strong habits. And strong habits produce strong outcomes.
Joe also connects this to stronger living. As a former athlete with a young family and a growing business, he talked about the routines and boundaries that keep him grounded. Culture at home, much like culture at work, is built through daily practices — not slogans.
Joe’s blend of discipline, innovation, and humanity makes him a unique voice in today’s investment landscape. His work at Parti Pris highlights where the industry is going: more personalization, more tax awareness, more household thinking, and more alignment between portfolios and real lives.
As always, the message is clear:
Stay invested. Stay diversified. Stay disciplined.
Invest Well, Be Well.