A veteran Edward Jones and LPL advisor is about to launch his first mutual fund. In January Sentinel Capital Solutions will officially launch the Guardian Diversified Fund (SCSGX) [see prospectus].

Last July 8, Cort Meinelschmidt and Chelsea Miller started up Hagerstown, Maryland-based Sentinel Capital as a go-anywhere, separate account manager working with high-net-worth clients.

"This is our main advisory program, and we decided to put it into a mutual fund to offer it to those clients" who couldn't meet the $100,000 minimum for the separate accounts, Meinelschmidt told MFWire.com. He added that the fund's non-IRA minimum investment will be only $2,000.

"This -- third-party asset management -- is the area we want to grow," he explained.

Meinelschmidt, Sentinel's chief investment officer and PM for Guardian Diversified, confirmed that the new fund will be advisor-sold. Advisors can waive that load inside of advisory programs and IRAs. He expects to solidify access to three broker-dealer platforms soon.

To launch the fund, Sentinel turned to Rocky Mount, North Carolina-based Nottingham as a turnkey back-office provider.

"We're just managing the portfolio," Meinelschmidt said, praising Nottingham's breadth and quality of services. "We looked at a whole bunch of different fund-servicing companies."

The new fund is built on Sentinel's "proprietary formula" for changing allocations between equity and fixed income, with a concentrated approach (no more than 50 holdings at once) to the equity side.

"It's definitely a go-anywhere approach," Meinelschmidt said.

Meinelschmidt could see launching an ETF someday, but not in the near future.

"We definitely want to focus on this specific fund at this time," Meinelschmidt said. 

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