Common questions from advisors evaluating direct indexing and Alphathena.
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Request a demoWhat advisors ask most.
What is direct indexing, and how is it different from a traditional index fund or ETF?
Direct indexing means an investor owns the individual securities that make up an index directly in their own account, rather than owning shares of a fund that tracks the index. Because the holdings sit in the client's account, an advisor can harvest losses at the individual stock level, exclude specific names, and adjust weights, none of which is possible inside a pooled ETF or mutual fund.
Does the advisor retain discretion, or is this a fully outsourced model?
The advisor retains full discretion on creating a model, trading, and constraints.
How long does onboarding take, and what does the transition process look like?
Typically, onboarding takes a week to get the data from the custodian.
Is there a setup fee?
No setup fee. The annual platform minimum covers onboarding, integrations, and platform access from day one.
Is there a minimum contract length?
Alphathena pricing is structured on an annual basis. Our team will walk you through the options that fit your firm during your demo.
What AUM is the basis points applied to?
Basis points apply only to assets actively managed in a direct indexing strategy, not your firm's full AUM under management.
How is pricing different from a TAMP?
A TAMP typically charges 30 to 50 basis points on all AUM it manages, which scales against you as your book grows. Alphathena's platform fee model means you pay for the technology and direct indexing assets, not a percentage of all assets you manage.
Questions advisors ask before their first demo.
How long does it take to get started with Alphathena?
Depending on your firm’s complexity, you could be live within one week of completing onboarding. Alphathena does not require a custodian switch or a lengthy data migration, which is the primary reason onboarding moves as quickly as it does.
Can clients customize their portfolios?
Yes. Advisors can exclude specific companies or sectors for values based or conflict of interest reasons, tilt toward factors, and manage concentrated stock positions, all while keeping the account tracking its target index.
Which indices and benchmarks can be tracked?
Alphathena has over 2,000 benchmarks to track.
Which custodians does Alphathena work with?
Schwab, Fidelity, Clearstreet, Interactive Brokers and Orion. We can always integrate with more as long as the custodian has an API.
Is Alphathena a subadvisor or a technology platform?
Alphathena is a pure technology platform. We do not manage portfolios, make investment decisions, or act as an investment advisor. You remain the advisor in control of every account.
How does Alphathena pricing work?
Alphathena charges a platform fee based on AUM tier, plus basis points on direct indexing assets. Pricing is structured to scale with your firm, with tiers designed for growth-stage RIAs through enterprise home offices. Request a demo and our team will walk you through the structure that fits your situation.
Can Alphathena work alongside my existing portfolio management system?
Yes. Alphathena can sit alongside your existing tech stack as a personalization and workflow layer. You do not need to replace your portfolio management system unless you choose to transition your entire portfolio management process into Alphathena. The platform adds direct indexing, tax optimization, and agentic workflow capabilities without disrupting what you already have.
What are the account minimums?
Alphathena does not have account minimums.
The questions advisors are asking about AI in portfolio management.
What does agentic AI mean in the context of portfolio management?
Agentic AI refers to systems that do not just respond to queries but reason through complex situations and formulate plans for the advisor to then act on. In portfolio management, an agentic system can analyze an account's holdings, evaluate its tax position, identify binding constraints, and generate multiple implementable scenarios with full explanations, without a Portfolio Manager manually configuring every parameter. Athena AI is Alphathena's agentic workflow engine.
How is Athena AI different from AI tools that just summarize or search?
Most AI tools in wealth management assist with tasks like meeting note summarization, CRM enrichment, or content generation. Athena AI processes real account data, runs against a production optimizer, generates actionable transition scenarios, identifies tax-loss harvesting opportunities, and explains the results in plain language. Importantly, it does not make investment decisions or execute any investment actions, but it makes the humans who do faster and more capable.
Does Athena AI make investment decisions on my behalf?
No. Athena AI does not make investment decisions. Using a deterministic system, it acts on the parameters you set, generates scenarios for your review, and flags exceptions that require your attention. Every action is visible, reviewable, and overridable. The investment judgment stays with you entirely.
How does Athena AI handle tax-loss harvesting?
Athena AI monitors every account continuously. When it identifies a harvesting opportunity, it evaluates the position against wash sale exposure across related accounts, selects factor-based replacement securities based on your settings, and surfaces the opportunity for your review. It does not harvest without your oversight framework in place. You define the rules; Athena AI applies them consistently across all accounts.
Can Athena AI run transition analyses for prospects before a demo?
Yes. The Transition Agent is one of Athena AI's core capabilities. Given a prospect's current holdings, a target model, and any gain constraints, it generates multiple transition scenarios in under a minute, each with projected tax impact, timeline, and trade-off explanations. Many advisors use this as a prospect conversion tool, showing clients a data-driven path before they ever sign.
How do I know Athena AI's outputs are accurate?
Athena AI's outputs are grounded in Alphathena's production optimization engine, not in a language model's inferences. The investment math is deterministic. Every scenario it generates can be executed directly, and every output includes a readable explanation of what constraints shaped the result and why. Alphathena has built Athena AI around four principles: reliable, repeatable, rational, and readable.
What portfolio management tasks can Athena AI handle today?
Athena AI is live in tax transitions today, with rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting, and advisor workflow routing capabilities built into the platform. The roadmap extends Athena AI across cash management, compliance monitoring, and client reporting. Every function that currently requires deep optimizer expertise or outsourcing is a candidate for agentic execution.
How advisors and portfolio managers work inside Alphathena.
How do advisors and portfolio managers collaborate inside Alphathena?
AdvisorHub is Alphathena's structured intake and workflow system. Advisors submit portfolio requests with full client context attached. Portfolio managers see a prioritized queue with everything they need to act, no email threads, no spreadsheets. Every request, approval, and execution is logged for compliance and reporting purposes.
How does wash sale compliance work in Alphathena?
Alphathena monitors wash sale exposure across all related accounts before executing any tax-loss harvest. Replacement securities are selected using factor analysis to maintain portfolio exposure while avoiding wash sale violations. The platform does not harvest a position if doing so would trigger a wash sale that eliminates the tax benefit.
Can I keep my existing custodian?
Yes. Alphathena integrates with Schwab, Fidelity, and Interactive Brokers. You do not switch custodians. Your clients' assets stay exactly where they are.
How does Alphathena's tax loss harvesting work?
The optimizer scans each account on an ongoing basis for individual positions trading below their cost basis. When a qualifying loss is found, Alphathena harvests it using one of two methods. The first is a one to one replacement, where the sold position is swapped for a correlated substitute security. The second is an optimization based approach, where the system looks across the whole portfolio for missing or underweight exposures and rebuilds around the loss in a way that reduces tracking error rather than relying on a single substitute. Either way, the portfolio's exposure to the index stays intact while the loss is realized.
How does Alphathena avoid wash sales?
Every trade is checked against IRS wash sale rules before it executes, across the substitute securities used in harvesting and across any other accounts held by the same client (both taxable and nontaxable accounts are checked), including retirement accounts.
What does sleeve based construction mean?
Rather than building one portfolio, the platform separates each account into sleeves, for example a core index sleeve alongside a legacy stock position or a factor tilt. Each sleeve can be managed with its own rules while the account is still optimized and traded as a whole, which lets an advisor solve for tax, concentration, and personalization at the same time instead of treating them as separate problems.
What is Ask Athena?
Ask Athena is the plain language layer that sits within the platform. It lets an advisor ask a question about a client's portfolio, such as why a particular trade happened or what the tax impact of an exclusion would be, and get an answer in ordinary language instead of having to interpret raw optimizer output.
How do I show clients the tax value Alphathena is adding?
Alphathena has reporting tools such as an invest report, transition report, and a performance report to showcase tax savings.
See the pricing that fits your firm.
Our team will walk you through a personalized pricing conversation based on your AUM, custodian setup, and the capabilities you need.
