Client Notes

“We walked every single-name overweight before lunch. The liquidity notes on the two smaller holdings were blunt — and useful. I still needed a second pass on the exit ladder for the largest position, but the first draft held through the next volatility week.”

— M. Cheng, family office liaison, Mid-Levels

“I expected a longer debate on sectors. Instead we spent most of the time on three correlated names that looked diversified on the statement. The soft limit we set felt conservative; I raised it later — and was glad the hard limit stayed where we left it.”

— Private investor, Kowloon Tong

“The handover notes were the point for us. Our principal travels often; the liquidity bands are now in a folder the deputy can open without a call. Formatting took an extra twenty minutes at the end — worth it.”

— Operations lead, single-family office

“Exit thresholds for the illiquid sleeve were honest about process, not just price. That slowed the session. I would have preferred a cleaner number, but a clean number would have been fiction.”

— Adviser attending with client, Central

Desk story: Concentration before a capital call

A Sheung Wan principal arrived with a book heavy in two listed names and a private commitment due in six weeks. The concentration map showed the call would push the largest public holding past the house soft limit unless a trim happened first. We spent the middle hour on sequencing: trim size, liquidity of the name in ordinary sessions, and a temporary hard limit until the call settled. The written summary listed three actions with owners — not a dozen suggestions. A follow-up hour two weeks later only adjusted the temporary limit; the sequence held.

Desk story: Exit ladder after a thesis break

An adviser brought a client who had already decided a holding’s story had changed, but not the price at which to leave. Exit-threshold planning produced a two-step trim and a final exit tied to a calendar review rather than a single tick. The client disliked the calendar trigger at first; after discussion it stayed, because waiting for “one more bounce” had already cost a prior sleeve. Notes from that sitting are now reused as a template for other thesis breaks in the same household.