Passionate Investors

Atlas loves poring over data.  Turning data into actionable information is the firm’s primary effort.  Our process is designed to observe dispassionately financial markets, searching for places your money will be well served.  For many, headlines create distractions to investment decisions.  Atlas’ data-driven approach seeks to minimize the constant noises of a 24-hour news cycle. 

Not all investors can claim to have such zeal for an investment approach largely void of emotion.  Take passion investments for instance (don’t worry I hadn’t heard the term until recently myself).  The Economist recently created a passion index comprised of items like diamonds, classic cars, fine wine, art, and watches.  For the sake of creating the index, the publication weighted the individual components according to ownership ratios of high-net-worth individuals.  Interestingly, their passion index has dropped in value 2 percent, on average, for the past three years, somewhat surprising given the positive state of the global economy and new wealth emerging from countries like the U.S., China, and India.

In theory, these items may help hedge price swings in stocks and bonds for those wealthy enough to own collectibles as well as traditional investments.  However, these hedges have interesting quirks.  For instance, they are tangible and may need to be insured to protect owners from theft or damage.  They might also be difficult to sell when an owner needs cash.  This illiquidity can cause mispricing to occur (e.g., an auction house might require a minimum bid that is not well received by potential bidders, leaving the true price undiscovered).  This dearth of transactions makes it difficult to know how to establish the value of such items, requiring owners to have a passion prior to taking possession.

Atlas cannot store an art collection on your behalf, and you may want to think twice about leaving your wine in our somewhat unsecured cellar, but rest assured that an abundant amount of passion fuels the goal of helping you maintain and grow your wealth.  In this post-financial crisis world filled with abnormal realities (e.g., negative interest rate policies and the end of quantitative easing), risk management is of paramount importance to us and, along with you, is the heart and soul of Atlas’ existence.