Sandstone Asset Management

Sandstone Asset Management

Sandstone Asset Management opened in Calgary in 2004 under the leadership of CEO and Chief Investment Strategist Sharon Watkins. The firm serves high-net-worth individuals, families, foundations, and private trusts, with a client base concentrated in Western Canada. Many of its family relationships now span two or three generations. Sandstone’s strategy sits at the intersection of discretionary portfolio management, tax-aware financial planning, and private-markets access. Its public-markets posture is global and value-conscious — the firm’s commentary cites Howard Marks on buying when value is cheap — and it overlays that with tax-efficiency work for high-earning professionals in their accumulation years. On the private side, Sandstone offers a private equity fund to its private-client base, making direct and fund-level allocations alongside liquid mandates. While specific public positions are not disclosed, internal research themes flagged in 2026 include Canada’s innovation ecosystem, energy-politics transitions, and cross-border capital-flow shifts between Canada and the U.S. Geographic coverage extends from Canadian domestic markets into global equities. Team size and total assets under management are not publicly reported. Sandstone’s Calgary headquarters anchors its operations, with no additional offices listed. The firm operates adjacent service lines for family offices — including coordinated professional networks and next-generation education — and for foundations, where it offers customized capital objectives and not-for-profit fee discounts. A dated point of operational posture: in 2025–2026 the firm’s published insights shifted toward themes of Canadian economic resilience and the need for domestic investment-engine building, driven by U.S. policy volatility that the firm’s CIO has argued creates a capital-reassessment moment for Canadian allocators. Structurally, Sandstone functions as a multi-service wealth manager that bundles discretionary investment management with family-office-style coordination for a concentrated Canadian client base. Its most distinctive feature is the insistence on multi-generational continuity — the firm openly frames its value around families now in their second or third decade of partnership, which shapes everything from tax strategy to private-fund construction. This makes Sandstone less a pure asset-gatherer and more a long-duration fiduciary that embeds itself in the succession and philanthropy planning of a small group of Western Canadian families.