Sitrin Guides His Own Investment Firm

Marcus Sitrin, a Pacific Palisades resident with nearly 40 years of stock-market experience, celebrated the first anniversary of Sitrin Capital Management in February.

Sitrin was formerly with Merrill Lynch as a senior portfolio manager, where he and his team grew their practice through a discretionary investment program. Today, they serve over 100 clients and manage over $500 million in assets at their Century City office. Many of their client relationships are third generation.

“Our mission is to assist our clients in identifying and achieving their financial goals,” said Sitrin, whose wife Sharon is an agent with Prudential California Realty in Pacific Palisades. “We know our clients well, and have the ability to work with them on their most important investment issues.”

Sitrin’s firm, which entered the independent financial advisory world a year ago, includes founding partner Efren Bolisay, who has been working with wealthy families, private business owners, and entrepreneurs to develop and implement investment strategies since 1998. Efren has an MBA in finance from Rutgers and a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics from Boston University.

Another staff member is Sitrin’s oldest son, Ryan, the junior portfolio manager, whose role includes client service, financial planning and technical analysis. He began his career at Merrill Lynch in 2004 when he joined his father at the Sitrin Group, after graduating from the University of Arizona with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

Marcus Sitrin grew up in Utica, New York, near Syracuse, and attended Penn State for two years before transferring to Cal State Northridge, where he obtained a degree in economics in 1971. After working briefly for Transamerica, Sitrin joined Dean Witter as a registered representative in December 1972.

“In January 1973,” he recalls, “the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke through the 1,000 barrier for the second time, but the euphoria was short-lived and the Dow fell almost in half in the following years. I quickly learned how hard investing was.

“My first client was my uncle, who was very proud of my coming from nothing and becoming a ‘professional.’ He bought 100 shares of IBM.” There were no other relatives or friends with money, so Sitrin slowly built his business the old-fashioned way, finding clients through cold calls and seminars. “I’d send out 3,000 mailers, get 10 responses, and maybe two or three qualified prospects would show up.”

Sitrin admits that his inexperience led him to pursue “aggressive investing using a lot of options, trying to help my clients get rich quickly. They were young and aggressive and had limited funds, and I wasted a couple of years before realizing that getting rich slowly was a much better path for me and my clients.”

About 1977, Sitrin was recruited to Loeb Rhoades, “a boutique firm in Beverly Hills with individually designed offices, wood paneling, oriental rugs, a bar in the manager’s office, well-moneyed clientele and long-term relationships—not the place for someone like me trying to establish his practice.”

Sitrin stayed there until December 1978, when he was hired by John Cody, a Palisades friend who managed the Merrill Lynch office in Century City.

Soon, Sitrin began moving away from the sell side of the business—touting individual stocks—and started emphasizing a consistent, disciplined investment strategy for a client’s entire portfolio.

“I learned that if the client could become comfortable with the investment process and not the next hot stock presentation, it would be good for them and good for me. Initially, I focused on the fixed-income side of the portfolio, as it had fewer variables than equities and was much easier to manage and have quantitative results. We defined the process to the clients and then sent basic performance reports for them to evaluate the results. Eventually, we used the same structure on the equity side of the portfolio and we were on our way.

“In the late ‘90s, I took on my partner, Efren, and we officially converted the entire client base to a discretionary investment platform (i.e., I didn’t have to consult with a client before selling a position) and never looked back.”

Sitrin, who married Sharon in 1977, recalls how they met.

“Sharon had an interior decorating business with her mom. Her dad was with a company that had gone public and he assigned Sharon the task of learning all about it. She called Dean Witter to get a quote. I was the floor man. After three conversations, I closed her and her mom for an appointment, in hopes of opening an account. I ‘borrowed’ a corner office, put my name on the desk and bored them with a less than scintillating presentation, but I was totally taken with Sharon. End of story: terrible account, but the best life partner.”

Their son Ryan was born in 1980 and Scott followed in 1984, the year the Sitrins bought a house in Pacific Palisades. Both boys played baseball in the PPBA, and Marcus coached their teams for 10 years. The boys played football at Brentwood School through their junior years, and Scott also played volleyball. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from UC Berkeley, Scott was accepted at the Wright Institute in San Francisco, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology. He is focusing his studies on the “the mental predictors of performance in athletics, academics and business.”

For more information about Sitrin Capital Management, visit the firm’s Web site: www.sitrincapital.com.