Portfolio Risk Quantified
Institutional-grade portfolio analytics, accessible to private clients. Protect first, compound second.
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Portfolio Risk Quantified
Institutional-grade portfolio analytics, accessible to private clients. Protect first, compound second.
Nabta Advisory is an independent, non-discretionary investment advisory firm. We bring the quantitative risk infrastructure once reserved for the largest institutional mandates to private investors, family offices, and sophisticated individuals. Final investment decisions and execution remain with the client at the custodian of their choice.
We are advisors, not managers. The distinction is structural, regulatory, and central to how we serve clients.
Recommendations are produced through NPRA, our Nabta Portfolio Research and Analytics platform, which combines machine learning, regime detection, and stress testing with the judgement of experienced practitioners. Machines read patterns; people read meaning.
Every recommended portfolio is constructed against historical crises before it is offered, and is judged on how it behaves in the worst environment, not the best. We would rather give up part of a strong year than absorb a severe one.
We accept no commissions, retrocessions, or inducements from any product provider, broker, or counterparty. Our only source of revenue is the client.
Client portfolios are held in the client's own name at qualified third-party custodians. We never take custody of client assets and never handle client money.
Each engagement is governed by a documented client fact-find and a documented suitability assessment. The client instructs; the custodian executes.
Model portfolio recommendations spanning distinct mandate types and advisory use cases: capital preservation, balanced, income, growth, inflation and stagflation resilience, opportunistic or dynamic allocation, and hedging or risk-reduction. These are mandate types, not pre-packaged products: the client defines the objective, and Nabta constructs the recommendation to it. The client selects, instructs, and executes.
A documented review of an existing portfolio identifying concentration, drawdown, factor and liquidity risks, with written recommendations for the client's consideration and instruction.
Built on a documented fact-find and suitability assessment, the firm produces a written portfolio recommendation reflecting the client's specific objectives, constraints, and values.
Recommendations for the use of listed derivatives for defined hedging purposes within the firm's approved product universe. Structure, sizing, and exit and adjustment parameters detailed; the client instructs.
This is not a marketing description. It is the actual sequence we run for every advised mandate, beginning with the client, not with a portfolio. It is supported by NPRA, our proprietary risk-analytics platform, and an independent verification system that recomputes every reported metric from raw market data before any report is released.
Everything begins with the client, not a portfolio. Through a documented client fact-find and a documented suitability assessment, we establish the mandate: the investment objective, risk tolerance, liquidity needs, time horizon, the balance between income and growth, existing exposures, any tax and regulatory constraints, and the client's implementation authority. Nothing is selected, tested, or constructed until the mandate is defined and agreed. The mandate is the specification; the rest of the process builds to it.
Against that mandate, we identify eligible exposures and instruments. A security enters consideration only when it passes a written eligibility filter that exists before the security does. We do not consider positions we cannot mark daily, and we operate market-data governance that fails loudly on error rather than silently substituting an alternate feed. We do not short, do not use leverage, do not hold cryptocurrencies, and do not hold structured products that depend on an issuer staying solvent. Every candidate must answer one question: what does it do for this mandate that nothing else already does?
We do not build one portfolio. For the same mandate we build five to eight competing constructions and run NPRA on every one, testing alternatives through Monte Carlo path simulation, historical stress events, and scenario analysis. Each is scored across three weighting schemes on six metrics, and we select the variant that wins under all three simultaneously, not the one with the highest Sharpe. Every variant is stress-tested against 2008, the 2020 drawdown, and the 2022 rate shock, and must reproduce within 70% of what actually happened before we trust its projection.
Different mandates require different holdings, constraints, sleeve weights, and implementation paths. The consistent element is the risk-first discipline, not a fixed portfolio template. Portfolios are constructed using functional risk sleeves where appropriate, including defensive duration, equity, real assets, income, liquidity, and hedging exposures, but the sleeve mix is not fixed. It is derived from the client's mandate, risk profile, liquidity requirement, and objective function. Concentration is capped by both weight and risk: a construction that depends on one or two positions to do most of the work is rejected, not rebuilt.
Deployment is mandate-specific. Where capital is being introduced gradually, Nabta may recommend staged implementation informed by market regime, liquidity conditions, and risk budget, using a three-state Hidden Markov regime model updated daily and filtered against whipsaw. Where the client is already invested, the process becomes a transition and risk-reduction plan rather than a cash-deployment schedule. In a crisis the discipline can reverse: undeployed cash may be recommended into the dislocation, because that is when forward expected return is highest and downside compression is largest. The client instructs; the custodian executes.
Every published metric is independently recomputed from raw market data by a verification harness that shares no code with NPRA. It reads prices directly and rebuilds returns, volatility, Sharpe, drawdown, and beta from scratch. Only when all figures reconcile is a report cleared, and mandates are monitored and reported on the same basis. In May 2026 this step caught a dividend-adjustment error in our own data feed that had been understating returns; it was fixed within twenty-four hours, logged, and the fallback data path removed as a direct consequence.
Most advisory relationships end at the recommendation, and the client is left alone for the part that decides the outcome: the years of deployment, the regime that turns, the rebalance no one calls about. Ours works the other way. We stay engaged through the entire investment cycle: every tranche of deployment, every regime change, and every rebalance, for as long as you are invested. NPRA runs against your portfolio monthly and a full report is delivered quarterly, and when the regime shifts, you hear from us, not the other way around. Every decision remains yours; our role is to make sure you never face one without us beside you.
Established in March 2020, Nabta has advised through the COVID crash, the 2022 rate shock, and the dislocations since: a six-year track record on real capital, not back-tested constructions. Nabta advises two named, non-discretionary mandates, both of which encode capital preservation as a hard constraint in construction, not as a claim about the result. The Conservative mandate has been advised since inception; the Dynamic mandate was added in 2023. The holdings differ. The discipline is consistent. The mandate determines the construction.
Live since March 2020. Defensively positioned and repositioned through Nabta's regime read, not on a fixed calendar.
Live since 2023. A diversified real-assets and floating-rate mandate, held entirely in liquid US-listed ETFs. No synthetics, no leverage, no illiquid positions.
The full verified figures, methodology, and the complete Investment Process and Discipline document are shared with qualified investors in a private meeting.
Arrange a meetingPast performance is not a reliable indicator and is not indicative of future results. The value of investments may fall as well as rise. Performance information relates to a specific representative advised mandate, is stated after the deduction of advisory fees in the mandate's base currency, and is not representative of the results that any other client may achieve. Mandates are referenced in anonymized form, with construction details generalized to preserve client confidentiality. Methodology, exact periods, fee and benchmark assumptions, and verification basis are available on request. Nothing on this page constitutes a personal recommendation, an offer, or a solicitation.
We believe regulatory clarity is a feature, not a footnote. Below is a precise statement of the regulated services we provide, and the activities we have structurally chosen not to undertake.
The firm's remuneration is derived exclusively from disclosed and contractually documented fees paid by clients. Nabta Advisory does not, and will not, accept commissions, retrocessions, rebates, soft-dollar arrangements, finder's fees, introducer fees, placement fees, or any other inducement from product providers, issuers, distributors, brokers, custodians, or counterparties in connection with client business.
This independence is a structural condition of our operating model, reinforced by Board oversight and by the disclosure pack provided to every client at onboarding.
The principal client relationships at Nabta are led personally by the Chairman and the Chief Executive Officer. Analytics, operations, and client support are handled by an internal team that reports to them.
Talal Al Ghalib is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Nabta Advisory, with a career across global markets and private banking spanning a quarter-century. He began at Citibank in derivatives trading, first in foreign exchange and then on the interest-rate derivatives desk. He went on to serve as Junior Partner at GFH Financial Group, and then as an equal partner at 21 North Advisors, a Category 3 investment advisory firm. He returned to private banking with senior appointments as Country Head, Qatar at HSBC; Executive Director at BNP Paribas Wealth Management, during which he remained a member of the non-executive board of 21 North Advisors; and Executive Director at Julius Baer, before founding Nabta in 2020. Talal also serves as an independent Board Member and Chairman of the Audit Committee of Saudi Marketing Company (Tadawul: 4006), parent of Farm Superstores, and formerly served as a Board Member and member of the Audit Committee of Khaleeji Commercial Bank in Bahrain. He holds BSc degrees in Finance and in Marketing from the University of Oregon, with a minor in Mathematics and Statistics.
David Arthur Rice is the Chairman of Nabta Advisory, bringing four decades of senior leadership experience in private banking and wealth management across the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Middle East. He spent thirty-six years with HSBC Group, including as Chief Operating Officer for MENA and as Chief Executive Officer of HSBC Private Bank for the UAE, Qatar, and Oman. He subsequently served as Head of UBP Middle East and Country Head UAE at Union Bancaire Privée in the DIFC. Since 2016 he has been an Associate Partner at the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, advising Middle East families on governance and succession. David holds a BSc in Banking and Finance Services from the University of Manchester and is an Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers.
I spent the first part of my career on a trading desk. I started at Citi in 1995 pricing foreign exchange and interest rate derivatives, where you learn quickly that a forecast is not a number. It is a distribution, and the market draws one path out of it. I spent the years after that in private banking, at HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Julius Baer, advising families and institutions across the Gulf.
In those rooms I noticed the same gap again and again. The advice was driven by relationships and conviction, rarely by evidence. When a portfolio broke, no one could tell you precisely where or why. That is an acceptable way to run a conversation. It is not an acceptable way to manage someone's capital.
I founded Nabta in 2020 to close that gap. The principle is simple, and it does not change: protect first, compound second. Avoiding a large loss matters more than capturing the last of a rally, because the arithmetic of recovery is unforgiving. A portfolio down 34% has to gain 52% just to break even. We would rather give up some of the upside in the good years and keep the capital intact when it matters.
We built NPRA, our research and analytics platform, to do this systematically rather than by instinct. It detects market regimes with a Hidden Markov model, simulates thousands of forward paths with Monte Carlo rather than assuming a straight line, stress-tests every portfolio against historical crises, and sizes positions by rule. When the model reads risk-off, exposure comes down. There is no market timing and no discretion in it, only a documented, repeatable process you can audit line by line.
The record is the part I am most willing to be judged on. Through the 2020 crash, the 2022 rate shock, and the dislocations since, our Conservative mandate has held its worst calendar year to under 3% and its worst drawdown to roughly 4%, while broad markets fell by far more. I will show you exactly how, on your own holdings, before you decide anything.
One last point on how we are built. We are advisors, not managers. Your assets stay in your name at your custodian. We exercise no discretion, so every recommendation is yours to accept or reject. And we earn only the fee you pay and see. We take no commission or retrocession from anyone, because there is nothing we are trying to sell you.
If that is how you think about your capital, the next step is simple: let me show you what it looks like applied to your own portfolio.
We work with sophisticated investors, family offices, and institutions seeking a structured, transparent, and independent advisory relationship.
Nabta Advisory W.L.L.
(Commercial Registration 139397-1)
Office 2010, World Trade Center East Tower
Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain
Nabta Advisory SIB
(CIMA Reference 1627990)
c/o Maples Corporate Services Limited
P.O. Box 309, Ugland House
Grand Cayman, KY1-1104, Cayman Islands
Nabta Advisory SIB is registered with the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority as a Securities Investment Business (Reference 1627990) on a non-discretionary basis. Nabta Advisory W.L.L. (Bahrain Commercial Registration 139397-1) provides consultancy services from Office 2010, World Trade Center East Tower, Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain.
Nothing on this site constitutes a personal recommendation, an offer, or a solicitation to buy or sell any financial instrument. Personal recommendations are made only on the basis of a documented client fact-find and a documented suitability assessment. All investment decisions and execution remain the sole responsibility of the client. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.