About
Harbor Ithaka

Risk Management driven growth

We believe that capital preservation and growth of wealth are interdependent goals that rely on the proper understanding and management of investment risk; that risk management is not contradictory to growing wealth, it is the cornerstone on which sustained long-term growth is possible.

The Firm

Harbor Ithaka WM (founded in 2006 as “New Market Analytics”) was started as a research and investment risk consulting firm focused on global macro and risk-driven portfolio construction, serving UHNW families and single-family offices in LATAM.

Our investment approach has been developed over two decades of empirical and theoretical research and hands-on investment management experience in various public and private markets and asset classes.

The firm offers a suite of consulting and investment solutions designed to better the investing activities of single-family offices, ultra-high-net-worth investors, and the advisory teams that guide them.

What differentiates Us

CIO and top advisors, each with over 20-years of investment experience and institutional back grounds: Hands-on investment portfolio and fund management across multiple asset classes (SMA’s and investment funds), as well as institutional trading and trading-desk management experience.

SMA and fund management experience in both public and private markets serving bot institutional as well as private wealth groups: Corporate Credit Fixed Income, Equities, Emerging Markets, Structured Credit, Real Estate, CRE Debt, Private Credit, Specialty Finance, Hedge Fund investing, etc.

Driven by a carefully developed investment approach: At its core a particular understanding of risk and risk based diversification, of portfolio construction and management, that recognizes the primacy of uncertainty and complexity, the importance of pursuing positive asymmetries, the value of optionality, and maintains a focus on the fundamental value drivers that generate sustainable gains; An investment approach that recognizes the importance of investment processes and of culture and organizational structure that can allow for rigorous thinking, disciplined decision making and continuous open feedback.

Robust and independent alternative investing platform, designed to facilitate proper diversification and alternatives portfolio construction, as well as the many analytical, reporting and on-going operational complexities of investing in alternatives.

We work with top tier banks and brokers, specialized advisors, due-diligence experts, and investment consultants custodians, auditors and fund management providers.

Our investment approach

“There are two kinds of investors, be they large or small: those who don't know where the market is headed, and those who don't know that they don't know.”

William Bernstein.

Harbor Ithaka’s investment practice is centered around a respect for uncertainty and complexity, which inform a particular understanding of risk, its management and portfolio construction. The constant search for uncorrelation, attractive risk-return asymmetries and positioning portfolios to withstand and benefit from a broad set of different scenarios, are for us, fundamental driving principles in portfolio design and management.

Some of our core differentiating Investment Precepts:

1

“Diversification”

“Diversification” of the underlying sources of investment risk (not of asset classes): We seek to harvest returns from as broad a menu of risk drivers as possible and work unrelentingly to understand the cyclical and secular shifts in the valuations and up-down asymmetries of different risk types.

2

“Macro” work

“Macro” work primarily as a risk-management tool (not as forecasting work on which portfolio positioning should be continuously changed). The type of macro work that we do is focused on identifying and understanding, on the one hand, potential systemic fragilities to generate investment guard rails, and on the other, fundamental real economy, industry and segment “macro” to qualify trends and opportunities on their fragility or robustness; Both tracks are brought together in the pursuit of discovering intrinsic value, estimate asymmetry and to optimize risk-return throughout the portfolio.

3

Agnostic and process driven

We are distrustful of backward-looking models, averse to return chasing and of crowded trades, alarmed at complacency and highly critical of the heightened role given to forecasting in the typical investment process and portfolio.

4

Portfolio Optionality

Maintaining several sources of portfolio optionality; respecting narrative-driven momentum, and recognizing the importance of adequately sizing risk-exposures and positions, are some of the other basic precepts of our investment framework.

5

Simultaneously prudent and opportunistic

Prudence and capital preservation are not contrary to being opportunistic: Prudence in investing requires both deep understanding of risk and patience, but similarly, when types of risks are being heavily discounted or are yet unrecognized by the market, being opportunistic, may contribute significant gains with lower risk. The detail is in the sizing and the strategies employed to capture discounted opportunities.

Our Team

CIO and top advisors, each with over 20-years of investment experience and institutional back grounds: Hands-on investment portfolio and fund management across multiple asset classes (SMA’s and investment funds), as well as institutional trading and trading-desk management experience.