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

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

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

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

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

This break out session focused solely on value investing with a retrospective look on 2008 and investing strategy. The speakers included Bill Nygren, portfolio manager forOakmark Fund, Meggan Walsh, portfolio manager for AIM Diversified Dividend Fund, and Martin Whitman, Co-Chief Investment Officer at Third Avenue Management. The session focused initially on the fumbles in 2008 that

The 2009 Morningstar Investment Conference is underway and today’s opening session was a focused discussion entitled “Let’s Talk Stocks.”  Participating were Bruce Berkowitz of Fairholme Capital Management, Tom Marsico of Marsico Capital Management, and Wally Weitz of Weitz Funds. One thing that I found extremely interesting was the contrast in investment styles between the Buffett

Tomorrow is the first day of the 2009 Morningstar Investment Conference.  Many of you will remember our coverage of the event last year (a few links are included below for you to review what was talked about then).  This year, both Jon and I will be attending the event which will hopefully mean extended coverage