Jeremy Siegel, Rex Murphy and Frugal Trader – All in one weekend!

I had a great adventure in St. John’s, Newfoundland this weekend. What a beautiful backdrop to have a conference in – the countryside is gorgeous, and the people are just so welcoming and friendly. The conference was for stockbrokers and financial planners from my firm and we had the pleasure of hearing numerous speakers – two of which really stuck out: Dr. Jeremy Siegel (author of Stocks For The Long Run) and Rex Murphy (CBC personality).

I won’t go into too much detail right now about Dr. Siegel’s talk since I plan on slowly disseminating the material of the presentation over the week. I will tell you it was the most informative presentation I’ve ever been to and it was quite a privilege to hear him speak. For those of you who don’t know, his book Stocks for the Long Run (now in it’s 4th edition) was ranked as one of the top 10 books on investing of all time.

As good as Dr. Siegel’s talk was, Rex Murphy’s presentation was nothing short of spectacular. I have never been in the presence of a speaker so captivating, incredibly intelligent and dynamic ever before. If you ever get the chance to see him speak – don’t walk, RUN to get tickets. He had us practically rolling in the aisles with laughter and received a standing ovation that lasted quite a while. He practically made up half the presentation on the spot too – no cue cards, no slides, nothing. Unbelievable.

And if that wasn’t good enough, I had the pleasure of having a coffee with none other than Frugal Trader, the author of The Million Dollar Journey. There is a reason that his blog is so popular – he is one heck of a cool guy and we got along very well. He provided me with some valuable advice on the pending migration of this blog to it’s new format and of course we talked investing for quite a while as well. The trip out to Saint John’s was well worth the price just to meet Frugal Trader. If you haven’t done so already, you should visit his site and check him out.

Well, that’s my weekend wrap up. I have two exams this week and a seminar to prepare and deliver so I will keep the posts a bit shorter this week. Maybe I have time for one last pub crawl before I go… :)