Your Feedback
The Value Investing Congress was a huge success. Many of you have told us that it was our best Congress yet. We would like to thank all of you who attended the Congress and invite you to share your thoughts with us by posting your comments to this blog entry.
The Congress is amazingly useful with smart attendees and really smart speakers. My only criticism is that there is too much information to take in over just two days. I guess that’s a high quality problem.
The folks who run it are very attendee-service oriented.
All in all, I am looking forward to the next one in Pasadena and then hearing Charlie Munger at Wesco right afterward.
Thanks.
Comment by F. Friendly — December 1, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
This was my 2nd year attending the NYC event, and I thought it was again well worth the money - with many high quality speakers.
In terms of constructive feedback, i would offer two thoughts:
1) I thought the mix of “discuss how to fish” vs “toss out a fish” swung too far towards the 2nd point this year. There didn’t seem to be a tight sequence of topics, and some presentations actually didn’t seem to have a ‘content’ topic at all, but instead solely focused on “my favorite stock”. While listening to well-research stock ideas is always interesting (and potentially profitable) - frankly, that is available everyday and everywhere. What truly differentiates the VIC, in my opinion, is to discuss approaches and frameworks with some of the best practioners of Value Investing. It felt like we spent much less time on that this year.
2) On the “how to fish” side: one topic I would be interested in next year would be - how people focus. There are thousands of stocks to look at, and it’s a challenge to focus in on a small enough number to go deep (unless you have a big research staff
). For example, the story of Pinnacle Airlines is terrific. But I’m 100% certain that a top-level glance at the company would not reveal most of the interesting things that are going on there. Similarly with Winn-Dixie and some of the others. Some people draw a small circle of competence and work outwards, while others start broadly and seek reasons to focus in. All in all - I think this would be a worthwhile topic to spend some time on next year.
But again, all in all - another very well produced and organized event.
Keep it up!
Comment by mlaub — December 1, 2007 @ 11:06 pm