I was fortunate enough tonight to be invited by my fellow employer to the Calgary CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Forecast dinner. Having never been to one before I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I should have expected, was a lot of people. There were over 200 tables, with 8 people per table, well you do the math.

The evening was MC’d by Brent Butt, well known from the show Corner Gas. He was funnier then I thought he would be, and was able to get a fair amount of chuckles from the financial audience.

They showed videos from last years meeting of analysts/economists making predictions for 2007. The panel that made predictions last year had to defend what they said, but it most cases it was futile. None of them predicted that oil would be so high. Then there was this years predictions, I won’t go into a lot of detail since the individual thoughts varied. But most of them said they expected oil to come down, the recession in the United States will be worse then the one in Canada, and that natural gas would come up.

I paid particular attention to the prediction of one presenter who considered himself a value investor. He suggested putting money into consumer staples (things we can’t go without) like; energy, hygiene products and food. In addition he said something that I particularly enjoyed (hopefully I won’t mess this quote up too much) “I’m going to buy stock that I think won’t go down, and hope it goes up instead of buying things that I think will go up and hoping they don’t go down” In this phrase he is comparing himself, a value investor, to a growth investor. All in all, an enjoyable evening with good food, a few laughs and good advice.

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Filed under: Events, Investments