## [# John West: Perfect Market Timing Is Still a Losing Bet](/sections/conferences/john-west-perfect-market-timing-still-losing-bet)
# John West: Perfect Market Timing Is Still a Losing Bet
It’s easy for investors to get caught up in trying to time the perfect entry and exit point in markets. However, even with perfect clarity and timing, it’s a strategy that leaves them on the losing side in the long-term according to John West, Co-Founder of Flatrock Wealth Partners.
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[By ETF.com Staff](/contributors/etfcom-staff)
Jul 07, 2026
Edited by: ETF.com Staff
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John West, Managing Partner and Co-founder of Flatrock Wealth Partners, spent 25 years on the institutional side of investment management before making the jump to running his own RIA, Flatrock. He talked with Dave Nadig while at Basis Northwest about his path to an RIA, why investors lose even when timing markets perfectly, and the decision not to run model portfolios in his practice.
West's move started with a personal need: when he left his last firm, he went looking for a wealth manager for his own family and came away unimpressed. He felt most advisors miss three things in not capturing a client's full capital base (including often-overlooked assets like the present value of future earnings), building investment processes that depend on predicting markets, and not paying enough attention to fees and taxes. Working through those gaps with his business partner, Kevin Winters, turned into a firm built around a simple three-part philosophy: people, passions, and purpose.
A recurring theme in the conversation is West's skepticism toward prediction and product-chasing. Having spent years building investment products and the marketing narratives to sell them, he's candid that most manager research and market-timing strategies add little value. Even perfect foresight about a bear market, he points out, would leave an investor with less after-tax wealth than just staying the course. Instead, he focuses on the few things advisors can actually control: taxes, fees, and portfolio structure. That's part of why he was at the Basis Northwest Conference in the first place, not to chase alpha but to explore structural innovations like 351 transfers and tax-aware long-short strategies, always with the caveat that a strategy has to make sense on a pre-tax basis before the tax benefits even matter.
West's institutional background also shapes how he treats every client as an individual rather than fitting them into a model portfolio. It’s an approach he says is almost unheard of coming from a firm where he used to lead model portfolio construction. He points to examples like California clients who may retire elsewhere, where deferral strategies make more sense than realizing gains today. Above all, he credits his years inside the industry with giving him healthy skepticism and humility. Having seen how products and pitches get built and sold, he says his value now comes less from picking winners and more from diligence, transparency, and staying disciplined on the things that are actually within an advisor's control.
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