Cypress Point Capital Management

Thomas J. O'Malley Jr. founded the firm in 2000. Before Cypress Point, he was a senior executive at the American Stock Exchange where he chaired the SPDR committee that approved and launched the first US-listed ETF — the SPDR S&P 500 (ticker: SPY) — in 1993. He later ran the ETF and closed-end fund business at Nuveen Investments before starting his own advisory firm in San Francisco.

The firm builds multi-asset portfolios using exchange-traded funds as the primary vehicle, rather than selecting individual stocks or bonds. The strategy spans domestic and international equities, fixed income, real assets, and commodities sectors. The firm emphasizes tactical asset allocation and risk-managed rebalancing for each separate account.

No. Despite the founder's deep history in ETF product creation — he chaired the committee that approved the first SPDR — Cypress Point does not manufacture or sponsor ETFs. It acts solely as an investment manager allocating client capital into third-party ETF products, which avoids the conflicts of interest that can arise when a manager sponsors its own funds.

The firm manages separate accounts for high-net-worth individuals, family trusts, and institutional investors. The client base is concentrated on the West Coast, reflecting its San Francisco headquarters. The firm operates as a boutique, not a mass-market platform.

Cypress Point is a consumer of ETF products for client portfolios, not a participant in the ETF issuance industry. The founder, Thomas O'Malley, remains a recognized figure in ETF history given his role chairing the Amex committee that birthed the first SPDR in 1993. The firm's investment philosophy is effectively a bet on ETF-centric portfolio construction as the superior delivery mechanism for asset allocation. (per the firm's official communications and public SEC filings)