Hi Guys,
The 2011 edition of the Las Vegas Money Show was held at Caesars Place from May 9 to May 12. This annual event featured Steve Forbes as the keynote speaker in its opening ceremony. Forbes is optimistic, mainly because of an informed and energetic US population.
The 3 day sessions are mostly free after registration. Thousands attended a daily matrix of presentations that offered as many as 15 lectures per period across 8 hourly periods. It’s usually a great opportunity and learning experience.
The Show also features an extensive exhibition hall that provided an option to meet exhibitors who are trying to introduce and sell their relatively new products. Mutual fund outfits, market computer tool developers, and newsletter publishers were fairly represented. So too were oil and gas wildcat entities and gold explorers. To each his own poison.
James Stack, Mark Skousen, Ron Muhlenkamp, Janet Brown, John Buckingham, Jim Lowell, Mark Hulbert, and Louis Naveillier were a few of the investment luminaries who delivered formal presentations. Jack Ablin effectively substituted for the recently deceased Joe Battipaglia. These folks always offer a carefully structured and documented market perspective with several investment ideas often embedded.
You might be interested in visiting the Money Show website. I have appended a Link to it. Also, after registering on that site, you gain access to many of the fine video presentations that are archived on the website as well as some generated at the Vegas sessions. I suggest you visit moneyshow.com at your convenience. The Link follows immediately:
http://moneyshow.com/Las Vegas is a terrific place to merge a profitable learning experience with a little adult fun My wife and I enjoyed the entire four days. We attended about 20 of the hundreds of meetings scheduled.
The overall attendance for the conference seemed somewhat down from previous conferences. Although the attendance was a bit muted, the enthusiasm from the participating guests and from the lecturers themselves was infectious. Some popping good questions were asked and spirited debate ruled the day.
Here are a few of my takeaways from the numerous sessions visited. These remarks constitute my composite interpretations from the sometimes disparate opinions expressed from several experts delivered from differing perspectives with separate and distinctive objectives. from the professional investment community. With that essential warning, here are some summary comments and observations; here is the message from Vegas.
1. The financial crisis had many causes and contributors including government policy and regulations, Wall Street prevailing and faulty wisdom, housing boom speculators, excessive leveraging by most everyone, and our own greed. The complexity and tight coupling of our global markets exacerbated the event and generated uneven winners and losers. The winning groups were Singapore, emerging Asia, and emerging Latin America. The loser cohort included Iceland, Ireland, Greece, and the United States.
2. With inflation rates and interest rates expected to rise with high likelihood, stay totally away from government bonds. That opinion directly corresponds to the current PIMCO’s Bill Gross bond positioning. That assessment was almost universally proclaimed among the MoneyShow market participants.
3. Perhaps for the first time ever, Municipal bonds face potential defaults in some communities. So the advice is to examine the solvency issue of any tax-exempt bond product offering that you are considering based on a careful assessment of default probability.
4. By most standard definitions, the economic recovery is on its way. The problem is that it is the most muted recovery ever recorded in almost all recovery measurement categories. The pace is sluggish at best. The economic improvements are almost imperceptible from many conventional measurement standards.
5. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency during the depression years, the third year in office of the presidential 4-year cycle has generated positive equity market returns in the mid-teen range on average. Most of that impressive return is generated in the first 3 quarters of the third year. Additionally the third year period has always delivered positive equity returns. That’s an exceptional record to motivate full equity commitment for this year.
6. The equity market is about half way through the average bull market after a nadir point has been identified. Based on historical averages it could last for another two years. Multiple Bull market indicators and signals are still in place. However, things could go South in a hurry, so stay alert. Famed conservative financial guru Jeremy Grantham of GMO believes the market will advance just a little more, but has cautioned his clients to be prepared to jump ship by the end of the third quarter. There’s a sense of uneasiness among the current forecasters. This time the recovery is indeed distinctive, and, politics and trust are significant uncertainties that enter into the investment environment equation big time.
7. The current favored strategy approach to mitigate risk is through broad international markets diversification and through strategic sector rotation. China and the emerging markets are the Chosen Ones of the moment. In a mature Bull market, sector rotation into HealthCare, Utilities and Consumer Stables are currently recommended.
8. An overarching approach that many market experts endorsed during the presentations was one advocated by Jack Albin in his book “Reading Minds and Markets”. The basic concept is to use a global macro construct whereby decisions are made sequentially from the top downward. In essence, the decisions flow downward from the broadest stock/bond asset allocation to large/small, growth/value and domestic/foreign calls to sector allotments to individual stock/mutual fund/ETF specific buys. I suspect most of us subscribe to this top-down decision tree matrix approach as a matter of daily living.
And the song and the dance goes on.
Perhaps, with just a little luck, from Bruce Springsteen’s haunting 2000 song, we can meet “Further On (Up the Road)” with some solid market returns.
Good luck to all you guys. I missed you at the recent Vegas MoneyShow. Perhaps we’ll meet the next time around. I hope so.
Best Regards,
MJG
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