I’m an optimist by nature. My family and friends, especially my wife, Kate, like to tease me about it. But that outlook has shaped how I think about both life and investing: with patience, curiosity, and a long view.
My passion for investing began early, thanks to my grandmother, Gloria, who first sparked my interest as a teenager. From then on, I devoured every investment book I could find. I vividly remember the impact The Intelligent Investor had on me, and by high school, I’d rush home to watch market coverage instead of sports highlights.
After graduating from the University of Kentucky, I served four years as an Air Force Officer. It didn’t take long to learn that in dynamic environments, plans rarely survive contact with reality. But planning still matters. The process sharpens judgment, reveals assumptions, and prepares you to adapt when conditions change; lessons that continue to guide my work.
When my service commitment ended, Kate and I returned to Kentucky to build a life with deeper roots. I spent several years in the bourbon industry before finally accepting what had been obvious for some time: I was going to spend my life studying markets. After learning the business at a regional firm, I founded Vermillion Private Wealth in 2020. I wanted to build a practice grounded in independent thinking, clear incentives, and responsibility. On my terms.
Outside of finance, I read constantly: philosophy, history, science, psychology, music theory, and anything that sharpens how I understand decision-making. Those ideas show up everywhere in my work. Markets are complex systems driven by human behavior, and if all you study is finance, you’ll misunderstand both.
I also play tennis, listen to a mix of jazz and classical music(you might enjoy my curated playlist), and learn daily from my daughter, who has an uncanny ability to remind me how little control any of us really have.
Underneath all of this is a deep respect for individual liberty; for people making informed choices about their own lives, capital, and futures. That respect shapes how I advise clients, how I structure incentives, and how I think about responsibility over long time horizons.
If you want a better sense of how I think about life, liberty, systems, and other ideas, my writing lives at jamesvermillion.com. Essays, reflections, and the occasional story or poem.
All testimonials have been provided by current clients. No client was compensated for providing these testimonials. Vermillion Private Wealth gained each clients permission to publish their testimonial. Outcomes are personal and specific for each client and one client’s results do not guarantee identical outcomes in the future for another client. The testimonials shown have been selected from among all client feedback.
Anchored in principles.
Positive-sum relationships
In game theory, a positive-sum outcome is one where value is created rather than transferred and where all parties are better off, not merely less worse off.
At Vermillion Private Wealth, I structure relationships so that trust compounds over time. My success is inseparable from my clients’ success.
Avoid self-deception
Physicist Richard Feynman warned, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Markets punish self-deception ruthlessly. I work hard to question my own assumptions, expose blind spots, and revise beliefs when reality disagrees
Act with fairness, & justice
Justice is one of the four Stoic cardinal virtues and is paramount to living a well-lived life (and to operating a successful business).
That means acting fairly when it’s easy and when it’s inconvenient.
Be directionally right
Turn-by-turn directions are great unless going to the wrong destination. The future is uncertain and forecasts fail. But direction still matters.
My goal isn’t to be perfectly right at every step; it’s to stay oriented toward resilience, adaptability, and durable outcomes over time. Directional correctness beats false precision every time.
Help clients own the upside
While uncertainty is real, so is progress. Human ingenuity, innovation, and adaptation have a long track record of reshaping constraints into opportunities.
My job isn’t to deny risk. It’s to understand it well enough that clients can participate in the upside without being destroyed by the downside.