Mirador Corporation Investment Management Position Papers
The following is a collection of Mirador writings from the last few decades. Most of them are sourced from client letters or investment seminar materials. They are posted here as reminders of some important topics for our clients, and to provide prospective clients a flavor of what Mirador is all about. This is a work-in-progress. We are curating the papers from our archives and making them internet friendly as we have time. For now, only the first one is available. We will send email alerts as the others are posted, so sign up for our email list if there are ones you want to be notified about.
1. Introduction to Behavioral Finance and Investor Personality
“We Have met the Enemy, and he is US”
Walt Kelly, Author of Pogo
Humans have incredible powers of both thought and emotion. The study of Behavioral Finance identifies how these powers work against us when investing.
2. The Behavioral Finance Portfolio Management Solution
The focus on objective analysis of relevant company and market data using statistics, models, back testing, and Artificial Intelligence is the key to successful investing given the problems identified by Behavioral Finance.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
3. Quantitative Investment Management Primer
“History does not repeat, but it often rhymes”
Clever use of historic data can be useful to discover factors that were most important to past investment successes. Theses factors can be combined to create models that are useful for identifying portfolio management opportunities more likely to work in the future.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
4. The Desert Island Portfolio Management Factor
The price of everything, whether it’s fruit and vegetables, clothing, or investment securities, is determined by supply and demand. The study of the battle between supply and demand for portfolio security selection is called Technical Analysis.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
5. Back to the Future
The Technical Analysis of investment securities is a very broad topic and prone to hopes and promises of the security selection holy grail. This position paper identifies what is most important using technical analysis for portfolio management.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
6. What is REAL Portfolio Management
Mainstream Media and internet sources seem to suggest that individual security selection is very important. That’s a lot of pressure for every decision. Portfolio Management eases the pressure and risk of security selection and timing.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
7. Market Timing or Time in the Market?
Buy and hold is an often touted “investment strategy”. Math is simple…. Ask anyone that bought the Nasdaq index unit in the year 2000 how well time in the market buying and holding worked out for them. Or maybe someone that had this “strategy” and bought the Japan stock market in 1995. Both took over a decade to break even.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
8. Active or Passive Investment Management
The markets have always been exceptionally dynamic and difficult to predict. The age of the internet has made that even more so. Change is the only thing that is certain. If the markets are constantly changing, why shouldn’t your investments be adjusted accordingly?
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
9. Technical versus Fundamental Investment Management
Story telling is very popular. Everyone likes a good story. But not every story has a good lesson. And many stories don’t have great endings. The human desire for a story behind an investment thesis is called the “Narrative Fallacy”. The narrative fallacy plays upon our emotions and using emotions for decision making is often dangerous.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
10. Time is a Continuum
The investment media and the securities regulators seem fixated on weeks, months, quarters, and years. There are many market writers searching for some grain of advantage with these time frames. But old man market doesn’t know the week or month. There are many more important things that drive market trends and cycles and following the narratives about traditional time frames is like picking up dimes in front of a bulldozer.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
11. Risk or Reward – What Matters the Most?
Let’s say you invest $100,000 just before a major market decline that leaves you with only $50,000 months later. Just to get back to even you need to make $50,000 on what’s left, which is a 100% rate of return. There is an old saying that the market is like an elevator going down, but like an escalator going up. So just getting back to even can be a long ride, and many investors seem to fall off the escalator at the worst time.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
12. It's not Sexy, but Slow and Steady Often Wins The Race
Many popular investment programs and products rely on and promote gains based on the long-term gains of various stock market indexes. We believe there is a better focus to take – getting regular pay whether or not the stock market goes up or down. “A bird in hand is worth 2 in the bush” so-to-speak. Earning investment income every month is much more satisfying and comfortable than hoping the market goes up and stays up some time in the future.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
13. What is Your Investor Personality and Why it Matters
Opening an investment account at an industry regulated firm requires that a KYC (Know Your Client) form is completed. The form is mostly check-box style with questions about age, employment, investment experience, net worth and more. Somehow these are supposed to translate into a person’s sophistication and guide the advisor to provide suitable investment recommendations. But there is so much more to understanding people and how they should be advised. For example, an often-ignored factor is a person’s willingness to take risk versus their ability to withstand volatility. This is an important element of a person’s investment personality that should be considered when advising them.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
14. The 7 Secrets of Financial Investment Management Peace and Happiness
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
15. The Tricks to Handling and Interpreting Large Amounts of Data
A picture is worth 1000 words – and maybe 2000 if it is color-coded well! Pictures don’t lie, but if they are not created with intelligence and carefully interpreted, they can be misleading. Data visualization has become a very hot topic. But it’s often not as easy as a line graph or bar chart from a spreadsheet of easily found data.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
16. What is Market Timing and does It Matter?
What happens to your long term returns if you miss the worst 10 days of each year? What if you miss the top 10 days of each year? What about missing the best and worst 10 days of each year? You might be surprised by the results and Mirador’s conclusion that provides a better definition of market timing.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
17. The 3 Things Most Responsible For Investment Failure
During my career I have experienced investment firms with Nobel-prize winning founders go bankrupt. You don’t need a high IQ, a lot of advanced education, or numerous acronyms for industry designations behind your name. What is most important is to understand the human condition and how that translates into investment traps that financially destroy many people.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
18. It is not that Simple – The 60/40 mix can Ruin You
It’s natural for people to like simple, understandable, and intuitive sounding solutions. But the markets and investing are often not intuitive. Strategies and rules of thumb need to be questioned and tested as the world changes. There ae ways to enhance your portfolio risk without sacrificing returns and paying.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
19. World Asset Allocation Killed by the Internet
Okay, it’s more than just the internet, but largely due to the more equitable dissemination of information, there are fewer inequities in the markets. The markets have become more efficient. Discovery of mis-valuations and other opportunities happen less often and are more difficult to discover.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].
20. What Market is Most Important to Astute Portfolio Managers
The stock market is like the good-looking person at the party getting all the attention when the nice person that is smart and fun to talk to gets ignored. There is a market many times larger than the stock market and hence it seems to attract people that overall seem many times smarter than many in the stock market. This market tends to get ignored by stock investors. And this market can provide vital clues regarding economic and market cycles and hence asset allocation and security selection.
Coming soon. Sign up for the newsletter here to be notified when this Position Paper becomes available or for early access email Stan Clarke at [email protected].