Our approach · 01 / 08
Discretionary portfolio management for Canadian families and entrepreneurs whose capital deserves a mandate of its own — not a model. We construct portfolios around a barbell of absolute preservation and asymmetric upside, and we hold what our clients hold.
The mandate
Most portfolios are assembled. Ours are designed. We begin by understanding the full picture — corporate structure, tax position, family obligations, liquidity needs, time horizon — and only then construct the portfolio that fits.
Engagements are discretionary. The mandate is signed; the transactions follow. Our clients delegate execution so we can act on their behalf with discipline and speed, not so we can act without their understanding. Every decision is documented; every position is explainable.
We are not building a product. We are stewarding a balance sheet.
One end of the barbell exists to absorb shock. Cash, short-duration fixed income, defensive structures, and selectively yield-generating positions. The role of this capital is not to chase return; it is to keep the rest of the portfolio free to take risk on the right terms.
The other end is built for conviction. Concentrated positions in companies we have studied deeply, private-fund allocations not typically available to individual investors, and disciplined structures that generate income against existing positions and define the loss before the gain is taken.
Every dollar has a role. Capital that is not protecting is producing, and capital that is not producing is protecting. The proportion between the two is personal — determined by the client’s circumstances, not by a model risk score.
What’s distinctive
A return earned in the wrong account, or held in the wrong structure, can be a return given back. Portfolio decisions at Enclave are made by the same people responsible for tax, estate, and corporate structuring — because in private wealth, the interaction is the strategy.
Every position our clients hold, we hold ourselves. The same equities, the same private funds, the same structures. There is no separate strategy reserved for the firm and no model portfolio sold to clients while the team holds something else. What each client holds, and in what proportion, is set to their own circumstances — the convictions behind those holdings are the ones we hold ourselves.
A meaningful share of long-term wealth creation no longer happens on public exchanges. We source private-fund allocations — institutional-grade vehicles in private equity, private credit, and real assets — that most individual investors are never offered.
We invest with a multi-generational horizon. The portfolio is not measured by the quarter; it is measured by what it delivers to the next decade and the next generation.
Discretionary portfolio management is an engagement in which the client delegates day-to-day investment decisions to the portfolio manager, within a defined mandate. The manager executes changes — rebalancing, harvesting losses, entering or exiting positions — without seeking approval for each transaction. The mandate, not the transaction, is what the client signs off on.
Enclave portfolios combine public equities and fixed income, private equity and private credit funds typically available only to institutional investors, and disciplined options structures used to generate income and shape risk. Allocations are determined by each client’s mandate, not by a model portfolio.
Three structural differences. First, every position held by clients is also held personally by the team — there is no separate strategy reserved for the firm. Second, the portfolio is built around a barbell of absolute preservation and asymmetric upside, not a model risk score. Third, the same team responsible for the portfolio is responsible for the tax, estate, and structuring decisions that determine what the portfolio actually delivers to the client.
Much of it, yes — and we use it. Screening, monitoring, rebalancing, and tax-loss harvesting are increasingly automated, here as everywhere. What clients retain Enclave for is what does not automate: judgment about when the rules should not apply, knowledge of the family behind the accounts, and the discipline to act — or to wait — when the moment is uncertain. The tools are commodities. The relationship is not.
Enclave maintains a deliberately limited client roster. Engagements are initiated by invitation or referral, and the firm fits best with families and entrepreneurs whose circumstances justify a fully integrated mandate rather than a single product. Specific thresholds are discussed in a private conversation.
Client capital is held with an established Canadian custodian, Fidelity Clearing Canada, one of Canada’s largest. Enclave does not custody assets directly; the team holds discretionary authority over accounts that remain in the client’s name, fully reported, and subject to Canadian regulatory oversight.