Bill Matson, MBA, CFA®, CPA (Retired), CFP®, FLMI
Portfolio Manager
Bill has been a staunch advocate for consumers of financial services for over 25 years. In particular, he has been active in the area of investor education.
In 1993, he founded Virtual Company Visits (VCV), whose mission was to democratize access to quality investment research for small investors, while channeling capital to those ventures likely to employ it most effectively. VCV sought to do this by pioneering the production of equity research reports in an interactive CD-ROM video format, featuring interviews with senior managers at publicly traded companies, as well as product demonstrations, facilities tours, and financial models presented via interactive spreadsheets.
As the 1990’s came to a close, Bill became increasingly concerned with the conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and lack of integrity tainting Wall Street’s advice to small investors, in addition to the dangerously inflated valuations being accorded to tech stocks. To address these issues, he set out to create a uniquely comprehensive guide to stock market investing that was published in 2004 as Data Driven Investing (co-authored with Mitchell R. Hardy). Joe Moglia, then CEO of TD Ameritrade, one of America’s largest discount stock brokerages, referred to Data Driven Investing as “groundbreaking” in his own 2005 book entitled Coach Yourself to Success: Winning the Investment Game.
To demonstrate the efficacy of his investment strategies, Bill established a “real money test portfolio” in July 2000 that achieved gross returns exceeding 9900% (compounded annual returns of 22.7%) through December 2022, when the test was terminated. These returns are documented by monthly statements from major brokerage firms elsewhere on this site.
Currently, Bill is seeking full-time employment with a family office, foundation, or endowment desiring to earmark $20-$100 million for investment in the strategies advocated by Data Driven Investing. In committing to a relatively modest limit on assets under management (a rarity on Wall Street, where assets managed closely correlates with portfolio manager compensation), he aims to be substantially more discerning in selecting investments than his much larger competitors in the small cap value arena.
Bill’s strategies were largely informed by exhaustive study of historical data, including tens of millions of financial statement and trading data points for thousands of companies during the 52 years from 1951 to 2002.
A retired Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Bill also holds Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), and Certified Financial Planner (CFP) designations. He is a graduate of Babson College, where he received his B.S. in Accounting with Highest Distinction, and of Harvard Business School, where he earned his MBA.
Bill is currently on the Board of Advisors of the Admiral James J. Carey Foundation. At various times, he has been Membership Vice President of both the Harvard Club of San Francisco and the Harvard Business School Association of Northern California.
Michael Sarfatti, BSME, MSME, PE
Technology Advisor
Mike currently serves as CEO and Chief Technology Officer of Brain Futures Associates, a San Francisco-based fintech consultancy. He has over 40 years experience in a broad variety of industries, including petrochemical, financial services, and information technology, holding positions in engineering, training, marketing/sales, business development and executive management, co-founding five companies involving software development and web-related infrastructure, security, ecommerce and social media technologies and consumer implementations.
In the financial services arena, Mike spent four years at Merrill Lynch as a consumer investment advisor. Following this, he spent six years as co-founder and VP of Fractal Markets, Inc., an institutional financial and currency futures trading advisory service utilizing our proprietary mathematical models drawn from non-linear dynamics to identify, track and act upon opportunities.
He also has extensive volunteer experience in a variety of professional, alumni, and social organizations. Mike is a former officer and director of the MIT Club of Northern California holding a variety of executive positions, including that of president, as well as serving as the regional representative to the MIT Alumni Association. He was also a co-founder and the first president/chair of the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Bay Area (dba VLAB).
Mike is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earning Bachelors and Masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering and is a Registered Professional Mechanical Engineer (PE)(California).
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