Exploring Asset Management Trends: Insights from Mind Money at FundForum Monaco 2024

Monaco is playing host to the number one global asset managers’ event FundForum this week. Since it was started over thirty years ago, this conference has become a world-class investment management occasion with Europe’s most significant industry participants.

This conference features some of the biggest names in the industry including Mind Money – the leading European broker. The firm provides different ways of controlling trusts for its customers. The CEO of the company, Julia Khandoshko, shared some insights about the company and the ongoing conference.

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What does Mind Money do? What is your primary focus?

Julia Khandoshko: Our company is headquartered in Limassol, Cyprus, and is regulated by CySEC CIF License 115/10. For more than 15 years, Mind Money provides clients seamless access to stocks, exchange-traded funds, and bonds on major stock markets, as well as opportunities for pre-IPO and IPO investments in the global markets.

What are the key features of your products and services?

Julia Khandoshko: Mind Money offers a variety of investment options, including gas, calendar spreads on commodity futures, Chinese markets, ADRs and GDRs, and a savings strategy. The company is also involved in the real economy, particularly gold mining, having a share in an enterprise. Additionally, Mind Money allows clients to invest in 35,000 companies across America, Europe, and Asia.

The company provides a range of trust management strategies. Rather than using a traditional fund structure, Mind Money employs a portable and scalable strategy model. This approach allows for flexible deployment of trading activities across different brokers, segregated accounts, and various tariffs and conditions adjusted to individual client needs.

How does Mind Money maintain its leading position in the asset management field?

Julia Khandoshko: As a financial company, our primary focus is trading in the commodity market. Mind Money’s expertise lies in calendar spreads and inter-commodity spreads. There are relatively few specific teams that concentrate on commodity markets. According to resources like Bloomberg and Preqin, which track fund strategies, Mind Money is one of these specialised funds with a narrow focus. Moreover, we have analytical groups in areas that include practitioners and scientists with degrees in technical fields, such as climatology, geology, physics, agriculture, etc.

Our strategies have been thoroughly tested, showing a positive track record since 2019, which is also marked on Bloomberg track. We also have audit confirmation from one of the Big Four accounting firms. Mind Money works with the largest brokerage houses in commodity trading, such as StoneX and Joe Brian, the latter being ranked number 9 in the world.

From a brokerage and asset management infrastructure perspective, we offer access to major exchanges, with CME being our primary one. We also provide custodial and securities storage services in the USA, UK, Dubai, Cyprus, Armenia, and Kazakhstan. Mind Money also works with its clients from Monaco.

Julia, what will Mind Money look like in the next three years? What’s your perspective?

Julia Khandoshko: Our main mission is not only to adhere to best global broker practices and align with emerging technologies but also to provide our clients with market, legal, economic, and all other types of security.

To remain competitive, we must match the technological advancements of leading neo-banks and top brokers. We focus on offering comprehensive tools for managing customer accounts and portfolios, including custody, portfolio management, and tax planning. For example, we use spread strategies to identify significant price gaps in commodity pairs. Over the next 2-3 years, we aim to develop these aspects further.

What investment prospects do you foresee? Could you outline the strategies you employ?

Julia Khandoshko: Mind Money sees gold as a very promising investment. Firstly, annual global gold production averages around 3,000 tons, with estimated reserves ranging between 50,000 to 100,000 tons worldwide. Secondly, unlike commodities such as oil that play critical roles in various industrial applications, gold’s demand profile is primarily influenced by its historical status as a store of value and safe haven asset. Therefore shifts in demand from industries like manufacturing sectors or central banks could push deviations from these predictions though medium term range may stabilise at around $2,500 per ounce.

Mind Money began investing in gold mining companies back in 2021-2022 because we understood that the increase in money supply would lead to inflation. Surprisingly, gold was one of the most undervalued assets at the time. And now we assist our customers in solving their most difficult problems by using long-term strategies which cannot be transferred or closed out immediately but have an average holding period of three months. Therefore, in such circumstances we are obliged to select the most solid assets with high liquidity. Moreover, no trade for us on what we don’t know best in it. If we provide a bond issued by a Chinese firm to one of our clients, then it must be available at the best market price as well as through direct contact between us and all key players for securities issued by these entities.

What key asset management trends do you see on the market now?

Julia Khandoshko: These days, the world is in a very complex situation. Much of what has been understood and clear for decades in financial markets is no longer so and the conventional wisdom in financial literacy seems to be outdated as we live in a BANI-world (Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear, and Incomprehensible). So we adapt our solutions to the current paradigm and help our customers to meet their needs.

We reckon that the current trends in asset management include advances in artificial intelligence thus making quantitative analytics more accessible and the changing scenarios that investment professionals and market analysts have to live with. In fact, these matters are being actively discussed within the industry including at events such as FundForum.