Archive for May, 2009

This morning during the general session, Mr. Robert Rodriguez of First Pacific Advisors provided the keynote presentation.  Mr. Rodriguez began by explaining his recent announcement of his coming sabbatical, stating that it has been planned for six years and should be considered a succession plan.  Then he moved on and started discussing the buildup to the credit crisis. Essentially he laid... »

Thursday featured another break out session attended which featured Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of GMO. This session was primarily about where we are heading economically. Grantham was engaging and quite charismatic. Grantham used the analogy of a hurricane in Florida picking up bird feathers and scattering them randomly along the eastern shoreline to illustrate market bubbles. He stated that some come down quicker... »

In the final session of the day was a conversation with John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard.  Don Phillips, Managing Director of Morningstar, was the moderator of the conversation.  This was the highlight of the day.  Mr. Bogle is a very distiguished investor with lots of experience and extremely knowledgeable.  First, though, Mr. Phillips asked Mr. Bogle about his health to clear up... »

Bill Gross from PIMCO was the keynote speaker at lunch.  He had a lot to say, but before I get to that (and before I forget to mention this - here is a link to the conference twitter feed, which some of you may find interesting.  By the way, is there any interest out there in a twitter feed for... »

Another breakout session - Two Sides of the Coin - included a discussion between Chuck Bath of Diamond Hill Investments and Steve Romick of First Pacific Advisors.  For true Graham investors like us, this was a little bit of a waste of time.  Both funds are long-short mutual funds so their strategy often includes a lot of macro analysis, projections,... »