Rich Lowrie, architect of the former presidential candidate's '9-9-9' tax plan, has joined Stratos Wealth Advisors.
Stratos Wealth Holdings has added a $250m Cleveland RIA helmed by a top
Herman Cain economic advisor.
The Lowrie Wealth Management Group, which was previously part of hybrid
RIA McDonald Partners, has elected to affiliate with $16bn Stratos through its
Stratos Wealth Advisors affiliation model, which allows advisors to join Stratos’
independent RIA and select their own custodian.
Rich Lowrie, Lowrie Wealth Management Group’s president and CIO, told
Citywire that the custodial flexibility helped lead him to Stratos. He plans to
custody his firm’s assets with TD Ameritrade so he can use its thinkpipes and
iRebal trading software, which he expects will survive through the custodian’s
merger and integration with Charles Schwab.
‘The one thing I found most attractive [about Stratos], if you can pin it on one
thing, is that they are set up as a multi-custodial operation,’ Lowrie said.
‘Under the Stratos roof, you could go with LPL, Schwab, Fidelity or TD. If none
Stratos adds $250m firm helmed by Herman Cain economic advisor of those ended up being a good fit, they were willing to even sign on a new custodian.’
Lowrie briefly entered the public spotlight in 2011 when Cain, the former chief
executive of Godfather’s Pizza, cited him by name as a top economic advisor
during a Republican presidential primary debate. Lowrie was one of the
architects of Cain’s ‘9-9-9 plan,’ which contemplated overhauling the US tax
code in favor of a flat 9% personal income tax, 9% corporate tax and 9% federal
sales tax.
Cain was briefly the front-runner for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, but
suspended his campaign in the face of multiple allegations of sexual
harassment. He died this summer of complications from Covid-19.
Lowrie told Citywire he is long finished with politics but credits his time with
Cain for changing the way he thinks about managing client assets. No longer a
pure buy-and-hold investor, Lowrie now oversees a fixed-income portfolio and
an equity portfolio for clients with an absolute return focus.
‘In a large way, that’s what justified the time I put into it,’ Lowrie said. ‘That
was back when we were following the same traditional modern portfolio theory,
asset allocation, buy-and-hold approach as everyone else and when you do that,
you see that policy risk — particularly the ones that lead to recessions and bear
markets — are the big detriment to that.’
Lowrie works alongside partners Kim Murphy and Ronda Warner, who
specialize in financial planning and operations, respectively. With the addition
of the Lowrie Wealth Management Group, Stratos now has 34 advisors in the
Stratos Wealth Advisors channel.
‘He loved our resources and he loved our support but he was also hoping to get
himself onto a platform where he’d have an ease of doing business and trading
in a more sophisticated way than most advisors,’ said Jeff Concepcion,
Stratos’ chief executive.