It recently occurred to me that I did not have enough how-to type articles at Chroma Investing. So this will be the first in an on going series of how to value investing articles.

How to Pick a Value Investing Conference

The first thing to do is start with value. This is not  a surprise statement on this website. As always, value is in the eye of the investor. What is a great value?

Start With Your Assets

What? Yup, Start with your assets. If you are small time value investor, or a young person just beginning to invest, you may have very little money to invest. You may be struggling to pay off credit card debt or scrimping to save up your first bit of capital to invest. Or you may be flush with a retirement fund or come into a big inheritence that you have decided you can invest better for yourself.

If your total capital is only $2000 it doesn’t make any sense to spend $2000 attending a value investing conference no matter how great it is. On the other hand a conference such as the American Association of Individual Investors conference which is only a couple of hundred dollars may be a great way to kick start your early investing efforts. In particular investing conferences are terrific avenues for asking questions, clarifying investing ideas and meeting like minded individual investors.

On the other hand, if you have a portfolio of $500,000, spending  a few thousand dollars to attend a great event like the upcoming Value Investing Congress, won’t hit your underlying capital and may actually provide insights that can energize your investing process.

What Value Investing information are you looking for?

Value Investing conferences are essentially tools to help educate yourself as an investor. Look through the websites of the investing conferences you are interested in to see who is speaking and what topics they are covering. Some of the topics at upcoming value investing conferences include: Value Investing today, Finding Outstanding Investments, Global Value Equity Investing, Emerging Markets: Overheated or Alluring?, Sustainable Investing: Not Just for Hippies Anymore, and this tongue twister: How to Decipher Financial Statements,  Avoid Value Traps, and Pick Investment Winners. There is a lot of variety at investing conferences so you need to figure out what you are interesting in learning, what can complement and expand your investing knowledge. Only you can assess what you know and what  you don’t know.

Value Investing Conferences can also focus on practical investment knowledge, such as actionable equities analysis or investing case histories. All knowledge is not the same. After some investing conferences you walk away with value investing strategies and others with specific stock picks from great investors. There is no right answer, it will depend on what you are looking for.

Who is speaking at the Value Investing Conference?

Another important factor influencing your decision to attend an investing conference is who is speaking. At next year’s Value Investor Conference in Omaha several of the speakers are best selling authors as well as fund managers. I have read Robert Hagstrom’s The Warren Buffett Way, he is now a portfolio manager at Legg Mason. Pat Dorsey used to be director of Equities Research at Morningstar when he wrote the book, the Little Book that Builds Wealth, part of that popular investing book series.

If you like to hear the superstars of Value Investing speak, it is hard to beat the Value Investing Congress. Next month hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who I have profiled recently, Joel Greenblatt, author of one of my favorite investing books, How to be a Stock Market Genius (yeah I know it is a dumb title, but it is a really good book) The Little Book that Beats the Market and his most recent book the Big Secret for the Small Investor. And if you don’t know him from his books you may know he is founding partner of Gotham Capital and phenomenal investor.

The most important thing to remember about investing conferences is that they are not THE answer to value investing, but they are a fantastic tool to learning or refining you knowledge of Value Investing.

If you want more information on any of the conference go the Value Investing Conference page.

Disclaimer: I am a media partner with Value Investing Congress.

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