Farr Miller & Washington

Michael Farr co-founded the firm in 1996 and remains its president and majority owner. He serves as the chief investment officer, overseeing the firm's equity research and portfolio construction process. His public profile includes a longtime role as a CNBC contributor, where he has been a regular market commentator, and authorship of several books on investing and market behavior. The firm's leadership is concentrated in his office, consistent with its boutique structure.

The firm builds concentrated equity portfolios — typically 30 to 40 individual stock positions — focused on high-quality, dividend-paying US companies with durable competitive advantages. It employs a bottom-up, fundamental research process that emphasizes free-cash-flow generation, pricing power, and management quality. Fixed-income allocations, when used, are generally confined to government and investment-grade corporate bonds for capital preservation and income. Portfolios are managed as separately managed accounts (SMAs), giving clients direct security ownership and tax-lot-level customization.

The firm's investment committee incorporates a top-down policy lens into its fundamentally bottom-up stock selection. Being headquartered in Washington, DC provides ongoing exposure to the legislative and regulatory developments that affect company earnings, tax policy, and sector valuations. Michael Farr's engagement with policy circles — including his board role at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. — reinforces this perspective as a recurring input to the investment process rather than an after-the-fact adjustment to portfolio positions.

The firm's investment focus is almost entirely on publicly traded US equities and fixed income. There is no public record of the firm managing private equity, venture capital, or direct real estate allocations for clients. Its structure as a traditional RIA with separately managed accounts — rather than pooled fund vehicles — further supports a liquidity-first, transparent portfolio model consistent with high-net-worth taxable investors.

Michael Farr remains the majority owner and chief investment officer, and the firm has not publicly announced a formal succession framework or identified a named successor. The investment team includes long-tenured research professionals who collaborate on stock selection, but the firm's brand and client relationships remain closely tied to Farr's public presence and investment committee leadership. This is a noted continuity consideration for prospective institutional relationships evaluating multi-generational durability.

The firm does not publicly disclose its assets under management on its website or in publicly available filings. As a privately held RIA with a single-office structure and a high-net-worth client base, it has not released a recent AUM figure through its regulatory filings that is independently verifiable. The number remains undisclosed, which is consistent with many boutique investment advisors that are not actively marketing to institutional allocators.

While the firm lists institutions among its client types, its primary business model serves high-net-worth individuals, trusts, and corporations through direct advisory relationships. There is no public record of Farr Miller & Washington operating as a sub-advisor to mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, or large institutional separate-account platforms run by third-party asset managers.