Hortz: In your ongoing investment research, what do you see by way of innovation trends in money management?

Mann: I see innovation in money management through the use of artificial intelligence. The best-known manager using artificial intelligence is the Renaissance Medallion Fund, which is not open to the public but has a history of unheard of returns for many years as reported by Bloomberg. This management company is active and seeks the highest absolute return commensurate with the risk it is willing to take. This manager rarely has a bad year and drawdowns have been small relative to the excessive alpha it has produced. It is a great example of an advisor seeking excellence that is not restrained by style boxes, over-diversification and a focus on relative return rather than a high absolute return.

With more and more access to big data and higher-performing processors and analytics, I believe AI in investing is in the early stages. One of our emerging managers in our money management consortium uses AI to manage a diversified portfolio of ETFs. He has won Top Gun competition recognition multiple times.

Hortz: How would you describe the unique services and ways you work with your varied clients?

Mann: Advisor’s Capital Investments believes in active asset management seeking to produce wealth over the long term and to offer disciplined, rules-based strategies that have a daily plan for risk control. We also recommend other advisors that meet high standards of performance using disciplined strategies that include risk control. Today, markets are high and risks are great. You must have a detailed plan for risk control. Understanding investment math allows you to build a plan that accepts risk in exchange for long-term rewards.

But probably the most distinctive service we offer is the way we educate and collaborate with our clients on investing by also functioning as a curator for their ideas. We feel the most important element in the client-advisor relationship is to deeply listen and find ways to work with your clients. By having a great deal of experience over a long period of time as a student of the markets, we can be an expert guide for our clients.

For our independent advisor and RIA clients, we are currently reaching out to collaborate with them to bring high alpha active managers to more investors. We firmly believe that excellence in money management is a collaborative effort.

Hortz: Can you share with us details about your newly launched Executive Intelligence Network and your thinking behind this effort?

Mann: The focus of the network will be on intelligence gathered from executives and entrepreneurs concerning special situations in equities. Executive contacts and specific expertise often have immense value in uncovering exceptional opportunities for investment. During my 48 years in the investment business, many of the very best investment opportunities came from my executive clients. I remember back in the late ’70s, a utilities engineer from New York told me he was buying many millions of shares of Telefonos De Mexico for .125 cents per share paying 10% in dividends. This investment eventually made him extremely wealthy. More recently, over the past few months a client asked me to buy a biotech stock that was not heavily covered by brokerage firms and it doubled in a short few months. This was the inspiration for the creation of this network. 

We are not interested in inside information. We simply seek information about special situation securities that are not receiving Wall Street attention. We are not looking for penny stocks, but companies with real value and breakthrough opportunities that are not widely known by institutions. We are not looking for short-term trades or small gains either. We are looking for a potential of 100% gains or more over a period of four to five years. I have found that these opportunities are found in pre-IPO investments, IPOs and publicly traded stocks that fall out of favor and find new life based on some triggering event. The non-random profits investment approach identifies and validates the stocks and industry groups that are poised for future profits. It is helpful, though, to know the triggering events that may put the individual issues in play.