As an independent Registered Investment Advisor (RIA), Carlson Capital Management has the ability to include any investment product in client portfolios which we think will best serve our client’s needs. There are thousands of mutual funds, ETFs, stocks, bonds, etc. that we could select when constructing your portfolio. These choices extend to futures contracts, stock options, currencies, commodities and, yes, even Bitcoin.

Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, is a form of electronic money that has caught the attention of many on Wall Street as its value appreciated significantly in 2017. We choose to exclude this investment from our clients' portfolios, not because we’re predicting the Bitcoin bubble to pop, but for the same reasons that we choose not to include the Mexican Peso or the Japanese Yen as an investment in client portfolios. Investing in currency is a speculative short-term gamble, not a long-term investment with positive expected returns. Over time, all currencies have an expected return of zero and therefore an allocation to any currency will reduce the long term expected performance of a retirement portfolio. For more on Bitcoin and its investment prospects we recommend this in-depth article from Dimensional, To Bit or Not to Bit: What Should Investors Make of Bitcoin Mania?