Weekend Reads for Finance Pros: The Financial Analysts Seminar Edition

This week’s Weekend Reads is a little different from the usual because I just attended the 60th Annual Financial Analysts Seminar (FAS) in Chicago.

Over the course of four days, we learned about a broad cross-section of topics from a range of notable speakers, including respected US Federal Reserve watcher David M. Jones, author of Unlocking the Secrets of the Fed; Amir Sufi, co-author of House of Debt; Erika James, dean of Goizeuta Business School at Emory University and respected authority on crisis leadership; and long-time observer of currency markets Rebecca H. Patterson, CIO at Bessemer Trust.

One of the standout sessions was a discussion with Ronan Ryan, chief strategy officer at IEX, that was moderated by Morgan Housel, a columnist for The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal. Ryan, of course, is one of the protagonists in Michael Lewis’s Flash Boys, the book that caused quite a flap (to put it mildly) about high-frequency trading (HFT).

If this is your first time hearing about FAS, it has a long and storied history: Benjamin Graham was on the faculty and Warren Buffett is perhaps the most illustrious attendee.

Many speakers made reference to interesting and authoritative papers, TED talks, and the like. So I’ve compiled some of these resources, as well as a few articles that feature or were written by some of the speakers, plus some of the press coverage based on the sessions.

FAS at a Glance

• David R. Beatty, CFA, from the Rotman School of Management in Toronto, had a highly engaging talk on cracking the corporate governance code. One paper he mentioned was “The Long-Term Effects of Hedge Fund Activism.” In an interview with McKinsey & Company, Beatty discussed the role of corporate boards in guiding and overseeing public companies, offered recommendations for directors, and shared his thoughts on the CFO’s role in working with boards. (McKinsey & Company)
• Winner of the top prize from the 2014 Graham and Dodd Awards of Excellence: “Exotic Beta Revisited” (Financial Analysts Journal)
• Milton Berg, CFA, led a session on Benjamin Graham and the mysteries of the market: “The Boundaries of Technical Analysis” (Journal of Technical Analysis)
• Harry Markowitz’s “The Utility of Wealth” (The RAND Corporation)
• Commodities. Seriously? Paul Bouchey, CFA, CIO of Parametric, quipped that investors should think about commodities as “a 50% off sale”: “Mining Shares Plunge as Commodities Index Hits 13-Year Low” (The Financial Times)
• “Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures Ten Years Later” (Social Science Research Network)
• “Proxy Battle: Emerging Markets Are Not a Substitute for Commodities” (CFA Digest)

Ben Zander: Perfect metaphor for a CEO. Bring together all the talent in the room to create long-term value w/out making a sound #CFAFAS

— Julie Hammond, CFA (@JulieSHammond) July 22, 2015

• Conductor Ben Zander’s TED Talk on “The Transformative Power of Classical Music” is the context for the tweet above. (TED)
• “Crisis Leadership and Why It Matters” (The European Financial Review)
• But Did You See the Gorilla? The Problem With Inattentional Blindness? (Smithsonian Magazine)
• “World’s Economic Crisis Isn’t Over, and Won’t Be for a While” (Chicago Tribune)
• “Are You an Aspirational Investor? A Q&A With Ashvin Chhabra” (Merrill Lynch)
• “African Horizons: Develop a Strategy for Africa Now Before It’s Too Late” (CFA Magazine)
• “Why Bessemer Trust’s Chief Investment Officer Is Still Bullish” (Barron’s)
• “Beyond Markowitz: A Comprehensive Wealth Allocation Framework for Individual Investors” (The Journal of Wealth Management)
• Morgan Housel: “Four Things the Stock Market Has Taught Me” (Wall Street Journal)
• Keynote speaker Peter Zeihan’s book, The Accidental Superpower, was reviewed in The Wall Street Journal in December. In “The Coming Hobbesian World,” Liam Denning wrote, “The North American shale energy boom raises the question of whether it is worthwhile for the U.S. to continue to protect everyone’s trade.” (Wall Street Journal)
• “What It’s Like to Star in a Michael Lewis Book” (New York)
• “Interview with a ‘Flash Boys’ All-Star: Ronan Ryan from IEX” (ValueWalk)
• “A Discretionary Wealth Approach for Investment Policy” (CFA Digest)
• One of the main topics of discussion was the Fed and whether or not there would be a rate hike in September: “Why the Fed Is Stalling on Rate Hike” (Forbes)

Financial Advice

• Are financial advisers worth the money? (Forbes)
• “The Rise of the Robots and What to Do about It” (The Investor’s Field Guide)
• “What Robo-Advisors Truly Threaten To Disrupt: Index ETFs and Mutual Funds, Smart Beta and Algorithmic Investing, Custodians and Their Advisor FinTech Ecosystem” (Nerd’s Eye View)
• “The Hierarchy of Investor Needs” (The Motley Fool)

A hierachy of investor needs http://t.co/KZAZUFVGi3 pic.twitter.com/g2xvkC3J4w

— Lauren Foster (@laurenfosternyc) July 14, 2015

And Now for Something Completely Different

• Corn, corn everywhere. In this very interesting article, “How Corn Made Its Way into Just about Everything We Eat,” Roberto A. Ferdman notes the United States is the largest producer and consumer of corn. “The grain is so ubiquitous that it would take longer to list the foods that contain traces of it than to pinpoint the ones that don’t,” he writes. He also quotes Michael Pollan, who told National Public Radio (NPR) in 2003 that “our entire diet has been colonized by this one plant.” (Washington Post)
• For all the parents out there: “How to Cut Children’s Screen Time? Say No to Yourself First.” Good luck with that! (The New York Times)

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All posts are the opinion of the author. As such, they should not be construed as investment advice, nor do the opinions expressed necessarily reflect the views of CFA Institute or the author’s employer.

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