Investing Superstars Share Their Latest Tips

The MoneyShow Orlando takes place every year in February. I attend as often as I can. The conference is free, so it’s an inexpensive way to get a feel for professionals’ takes on the status of the market.

They say you get what you pay for. In that sense, this conference’s “free” price tag is misleading. I understand the speakers and exhibitors pay a chunk of change to pitch their ideas (and their wares) to the attendees.

And the conference is busy. There are so many retired investors in the vicinity that it’s easy to draw a crowd. The Omni ChampionsGate resort must have sold hundreds of $15 parking spots each day.

It runs from Thursday to Sunday. I was only able to get there midday Friday, but I still found this year’s events enlightening. Here are some of the things the speakers had to say…

Are We in a Bear Market?

The presenters say “no.”

For one, it’s too early. The market peaked on January 26. As of Friday, February 9, we had only seen 10 trading days since … and the market was up on three of those days.

Definitions vary, but Investopedia suggests a bear market requires multiple indices to fall 20% or more from peak over a two-month period. We haven’t seen that yet.

The consensus was that this is a correction.

Most suggest the correction is healthy. Tom Grimes of Reaves Asset Management said: “[It’s] not that we all wish for corrections, but we know they’re a part of the market.”

And we hadn’t seen a correction in a long time. The S&P 500 finished higher each month in 2017. That had never happened before.

(As an aside, it still hasn’t this year either. The S&P 500 finished more than 5% higher in January. And February’s not over yet.)

Most of the presenters believe this pullback is temporary.

Ryan Batchelor from Clifford Capital Partners had a solid line about today’s market:

Counterintuitively, when it feels worst, that’s often the best opportunity.

Batchelor says he and his partner, David Passey, are high-conviction value investors. They try to buy stocks at a discount to what they’re worth.