Cabana Asset Management

Charles Edward Lance is the CEO, Chief Investment Officer, and sole named portfolio architect. Lance sets the parameters of the firm's 'Volatility Navigator' risk-overlay model daily and has final authority over all sleeve allocations. The firm's investment committee is small and centralized around his methodology.

The Seven Sleeves are seven independent sub-portfolios — each a distinct hedged-equity or fixed-income strategy — that together form the firm's flagship offering. Each sleeve targets a specific risk/return band, and the aggregate portfolio holds approximately 400 ETF and equity positions. The sleeves are rebalanced daily based on the output of the firm's proprietary risk-overlay model.

Cabana uses a backward-looking volatility model that adjusts equity beta across sleeves daily — scaling up or down based on realized market volatility rather than forward forecasts. The model publishes a daily drawdown probability cone for each sleeve, and the firm's central claim is that the risk management process, not individual security selection, drives the majority of returns.

Cabana primarily distributes its strategies through sub-advisory relationships with independent RIAs, alongside direct separate accounts for high-net-worth and mass-affluent clients. The firm's architecture is built around the 'Target Drawdown Professional' model — a rules-based account that can be white-labeled by advisor partners.

Cabana invests primarily in US large-cap equities and fixed-income via ETFs, with secondary exposure to international developed-market instruments. The portfolio sleeve composition is historically dominated by domestic instruments, reflecting the model's emphasis on liquid, transparent markets where the risk-overlay signals are most reliable.

Unusually for a firm of its size, Cabana publishes a daily dashboard showing the current sleeve exposures and forward drawdown probability cone for its flagship strategy. The firm treats this transparency as a structural differentiator — the investment logic is intentionally public, which functions both as a risk-management discipline and a client-retention mechanism.

Cabana's fee structure is advisory or sub-advisory depending on the client relationship, with RIA partners typically layering their own fees on top of Cabana's management fee. The exact fee schedule has varied over time and the firm does not publicly write uniform management fee levels — fee terms are negotiated on a partner-by-partner basis.