Your questions, answered

Yes - that's possible anytime during regular market hours. The allocation strategies invest in very liquid assets only, such as ETFs and single stocks. There is no fee associated with the exit; you can sell your assets as long as markets are open. Note that when selling assets you typically sell them at the bid side of the market, whereas prices shown may be based on the last trade or on mid market, so the proceeds from selling may be a little lower, typically around $0.01 per share.

Yes - and the portfolio implementation will be smart about it. If two strategies take offsetting positions they will be netted before they are traded, saving you on transaction costs.

There are multiple reasons that can be grouped into two categories:

1. You could save on fees. The structured product you buy through your brokerage is worth considerably less than what you pay for it. This Morning Star article shows a few examples, annual fees can range from 1.5% to 2%. GLR charges less than that - see our pricing page. On top of annual fees, FIAs typically charge fees if you want to exit early ("Surrender Charge"); in our case you can sell your assets at any time you wish.

2. We can adapt. At the launch, the underlying investment strategy may be similar between an FIA and GLR's quantitative asset allocation strategy. After a while, sectors may be realigned and new sectors with respective ETFs are launched, or new ideas to managing a portfolio may emerge. A traditional FIA with its typically long maturity will not invest in the new ETFs and leave you locked in a potentially outdated algorithm, unless you are willing to pay the surrender charges and change to a different product. GLR's strategies can be updated live and you will automatically benefit, or you can choose to switch to a different strategy at any time.

It depends. If you managed your IRA account with GLR, you could benefit from pre-tax gains. If you have a regular brokerage account you will have to pay capital gains taxes. The good new though is that the typically lower fees could offset this tax disadvantage even in a regular margin account.

Your main exposure is to the stock market. The strategies are designed to be very transparent and invest in liquid assets only, and as volatility increases, the strategies will reduce exposure to the market. A volatility increase is often the consequence of a market downturn and decreasing the exposure quickly in such scenarios can often help to reduce losses.
Unlike Fixed Indexed Annuities (FIAs) you do not have credit risk to the insurance company, or in the case of Structured Products, you do not have credit risk to the issuing bank. Importantly, you do not have counterparty risk to GLR: The assets in your portfolio are held in "street name" at our custodian, Alpaca Securities, and are yours. Even in an extreme scenario where both GLR and Alpaca disappeared, you would still own the shares in your portfolio and you could sell them once transferred to another brokerage. The worst case in such a scenario is that you would have to wait for the transfer to complete and face a few additional days of market risk, but you would not lose your investments.

Yes, you can see the current snapshot of your portfolio in the portal. This are real, liquid ETFs that can be sold easily if you wish to do so.

The Strategy is aware of exchange holidays and will stop trading early on half days. If the exchange is closed unexpectedly the Strategy will no longer receive updated prices and will stop evolving; additionally our Portfolio Managers and Traders can manually end trading for the day. In a worst case scenario where exchanges stop working due to any unforseen event (Force Majeure) Portfolio Managers can similarly halt trading of the strategy to avoid any unwanted behavior. Your assets would remain in your portfolio and your sole exposure is to the market; if you wish to do so you can close all positions at any time during market hours.