Wealthy investors zoom in on Ferraris, art finance and bespoke batteries

New York

WHEN money and connections mean you can invest in just about anything, anywhere and over any time frame, what winds up in your portfolio?

Yes, the rich are buffeted by the same forces affecting everyone else: rising rates, trade wars and global populism. But in the rarefied world of ultra-high-net-worth investors, diversification doesn't mean index funds or assembling a standard stock/bond/cash mix.

With prospects for equities uncertain, Bloomberg canvassed wealthy investors and advisers to find unusual opportunities in 2019 open to those with big fortunes and a taste for the exotic. Following is a sampling of the possibilities.

A red 1962 250 GTO owned by technology executive Greg Whitten sold in August for a record US$48.4 million. Just 36 were made. (And yes, it reportedly went to auction with a financial guarantee.) More owners are buying and barely driving supercars because low mileage means a higher price later on, said Ferrari expert and racer Todd Morici. (He calls those cars "garage art".) Vintage cars as a category returned 288 per cent in the past decade, according to the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index, or more than twice that of the S&P 500 Index.

Mr Morici, 62, owns five Ferraris and builds collections for European and Middle Eastern buyers through his Morici Motor Sports. Buying the right car is like buying the right stock, he said: "You can pay more to buy the best, because at the end, it will be worth more."

Mere money won't always get you one. Ferrari allows only clients who race in its motorsports programme to buy the special-edition 488 Pista Piloti. Mr Morici has a Blu Tour De France Pista Piloti on order for US$500,000.

Offering a guaranteed minimum price to those putting fine art on the block has become standard at top auction houses. Sellers like knowing that works won't go unsold. In return, if the art sells for more than the guarantee, some of the profit above the prearranged bid goes to the guarantor.

To offload risk, auction houses are negotiating more "irrevocable bids" - also known as "third-party guarantees" - with investors who may see it as a display of financial prowess. With the art market peaking, opportunities abound but carry greater risk and should be approached with caution.

The biggest profit for a guarantor was last year's auction of Leonardo da Vinci's "Salvator Mundi" at Christie's. Guaranteed to sell for more than US$100 million, the painting was hammered at US$450 million. Philip Hoffman, founder of the London-based Fine Art Group, estimated that the guarantor made as much as US$150 million.

In the UK, Compass Pathways has produced a synthetic version of psilocybin for a large-scale clinical trial launched in September. The trial is taking place in Europe and North America over the next year or so, with healthy volunteers taking the drug under the supervision of psychiatrists, according to the life sciences company.

"It just feels like a cultural shift going on," said billionaire Mike Novogratz, who's an investor in Compass Pathways. "It's been around for thousands of years; people kind of know its side effects."

Other backers include German investor Christian Angermayer and venture capitalist Peter Thiel. Mr Angermayer's family office founded Atai Life Sciences, which is backing studies of psilocybin to treat depression and has a stake in Compass Pathways.

While the consensus view is that the lithium-ion battery industry has low margins, Citigroup believes "very efficient manufacturers will generate higher profit margins over time," said David Bailin, the unit's chief investment officer. Mr Bailin envisions a security that would track the performance of seven stocks exposed to battery manufacturers and the mining of raw material used in their production.

"For me, the Amazon effect is primarily that 53 per cent of sales on their platforms are from third-party sellers," he said. "Those sellers are often tenants in my buildings." Amazon's decision to open a satellite headquarters in Long Island City, New York, "was huge for us, and further justification for adding to this asset class".

Purchases typically run into the millions of dollars and can include cameras, lenses, tripods, thousands of photos, and undeveloped rolls of film and video, along with the potential to license the images. "You need a 20-year plan to think of how you build a world-class photo collection," Mr Sonnenfeldt said.

One of Mr Sonnenfeldt's purchases was the estate of Hungarian-American fashion photographer Andre de Dienes, who Mr Sonnenfeldt said "literally discovered Marilyn Monroe" after she was sent to him as a 19-year-old model for a photo series he was shooting of nudes. BLOOMBERG