After working the banking industry for 25 years, Igor Cornelsen turned to being a full-time investment advisor. He opened Bainbridge Investment Co. by establishing an office in the Bahamas. He handles his own investments through this firm as well as his clients, mostly Brazilians and Americans. He is originally from Curitiba, Brazil, and now spends his time between Rio de Janiero, Brazil, Southern Florida, and the Bahamas.
As he wants to get up when the European stock markets open, Igor Cornelsen gets up pretty early in the morning. An economist by training, he studies economies around the world during the day and individual companies as well. He uses this information to adjust the fund he manages according to what he sees going on in the world. He also has meetings to attend, he has noted, but nowadays he keeps these to a limited number.
The advice he would give to his younger self, and does give to young fund managers, is to pay attention to information, not opinions. The vast majority of financial writers opinions are pretty much worthless, he notes, and are just used to fill up the 24/7 news cycle. For this reason, Igor Cornelsen will only get his news directly from Reuters. They only report the facts which are all that he wants to know about.
He says that he sold all of his Brazilian stocks in 2010 because a new government came in that wanted to implement a new economic model. He could see that this model would be disastrous for that nation’s economy. While some other fund managers did agree with him Igor Cornelsen says he was the only one to get completely out of Brazilian stocks. He was right and that country’s economy is still struggling to make up lost ground ever since.
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