Traditions are the melody of life, Nassim Taleb once said, and that saying has always stuck with me. My life is a continuous melody only occasionally punctuated by new traditions.
It seems that investment conferences are the constants in my life. I attend VALUEx Klosters, hosted by my friend Guy Spier every February. Then there’s the Berkshire Hathaway trip to Omaha in May. Mid-June is when my company puts together VALUEx Vail (more on that later). Then my kids and I drive to Santa Fe in late July to see the Santa Fe Opera. Okay, it’s not a conference, but it’s something we do every year. Then in October, I attended a small private conference in Richmond and another in NYC in November.
This year, I may be adding two more conferences to my list. My son Jonah, my brother Alex, and I are traveling to Trani, Italy in early July to attend the Value Investing Seminar. The last time I was at this conference was in 2010.
Then in September, Jonah and I are joining my friend Ben for a trip to Japan. Ben is setting up company visits. Hopefully, we’ll have an opportunity to meet with a dozen companies. I’m really interested in Japan but haven’t yet made an investment. It’s my first time in Japan, and Jonah and I are going to play tourist for a few days.
If the schedule permits, from Japan, Jonah and I are going to fly to Cyprus to attend a value conference put together by my friend Sophocles.
What’s really amazing is that I’ll be meeting a lot of my investment friends at these conferences, and we’ll continue conversations we started at previous events. This is what’s so great about the value investing community: Though we theoretically compete with each other, in reality we love sharing ideas and teaching and learning from one another. There’s a huge culture of learning and kindness in the value investing community.
Back to VALUEx Vail. This year, we heard 24 presentations in three days. Despite the market making new highs and being at the highest valuation since the dotcom bubble, I have more ideas to research from this conference than ever before.
You can browse through presentations from this year and past years on the VALUEx Vail website. We were given permission to share some but not all presentations.
In our quest to help and educate, we have created these resources:
- You can read my primer on value investing, “Six Commandments of Value Investing.” It’s a game-changer, trust me. (click here)
- I created a curriculum for young investors, inspired by my own kids taking their first steps in the real world. It covers value investing, career tips, a bit of Stoicism, and some life wisdom. Pretty handy stuff. (more info here)
- You can dive into my Almanacs – all my articles over the years, neatly packed into PDFs. It’s like a time capsule of investing insights. (check them out here)
- Want signed copies of my books? Easy. Just donate to these great charities and I’ll send them your way. Books for you, help for others – win-win. (here’s how)
