Master Investor 2018 (17 March)

14th Mar '18 by jonesj

7 comments 3380 reads

The Master Investor show 2018 is on Saturday, in north London.

I have the free ticket, which is just as well, since the Jim Mellon talk is cut to 30 minutes and subject to an additional £25 fee on top of the entry fee. His 2016 talk was quite interesting, but the 2017 talk had very little overlap to my circle of competence (or truthfully, partial competence).

Simon Caulkwell is on at 10:00 am, so I shall be catching an early train to make this.

After that, the Gallery Suite talks appear to be the most interesting place to be. When it is not interesting, one of the local coffee shops can take my custom.

I'll wonder around the company stands, but as I have no expertise in mining or biotech, my chances of finding an interesting investment are slim.

Is anyone else going along ?

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Jonesj

Premium Member

7 comments

Andrew L

15th Mar '18

I'm going. The quality of speakers looks poor. Just seems to be driven by sponsors such as Fidelity. Always worth seeing Simon Cawkwell though. A speaker from French oil group Total. That is bizzare isn't it? Lots of speakers from London South East. Seems now like a corporate and sponsor driven event. Little effort to identify and attract high quality companies. Seems like an ego trip for Jim Mellon. Also little effort to attract interesting and non-corporate investors to speak and share their views. I can't see that I will get much value out of going but it is next door to where I live.

tic_tac_toe

15th Mar '18

mello2018 is a higher quality event https://www.stockopedia.com/content/mello-2018-wheres-the-party-335248/

jonesj

15th Mar '18

I agree Mello2018 looks like a higher quality event, which is why I have signed up for that as well.

For me, the Master Investor event requires less commitment, since it's on a Saturday, is a short train ride away & the ticket cost is low or zero.

I also intend to go the UK Investor event next month.

grb

15th Mar '18

Yeas I have a free ticket for both the London shows - sadly I can't make Mello, which definitely looks like a quality event. Master Investor looks fairly uninspiring, which is good as I can only be there for the morning anyway this time. Thanks for the heads up on the extra £25 for Jim M. - I hadn't clocked that. I wonder how many people will pay up. Whilst he's been one of he more interesting speakers (I too have been for the last couple of years), it doesn't seem worth paying up to me. I was wondering last year what Fidelity were up to tarnishing their brand by associating themselves with a generally pretty lacklustre event. UK Investor has much more to offer, for all its faults, IMHO.

jonesj

2nd Apr '18

Visit Report.

Arrived in time to hear Simon Cawkwell speak, which is always a pleasure. The most interesting idea was something I had considered previously, but never actioned. Short Tesla. Anyhow, 8 days after the show, I finally opened an IG account, shorted Tesla the following day & made a nice little profit in 3 days. Must revisit this, as I can see no rational justification for the Tesla valuation.

None of the other speakers was of any significant interest from an investment perspective. I quite liked some of the ideas from the Hungarian presentation, which suggests they have some of the right policies in place to create a successful economy. Plus attractive market valuations. However, I haven't found any ETFs for Hungary & my existing broker accounts don't seem to allow dealing in Hungarian shares.

I listened to a couple of resource stock presentations, but don't have the time to study yet another sector.

There was also promotion of some phone app which facilitated the hiring of students for £10 an hour for various jobs. I cannot see this succeeding, since it cannot make sense to hire students for manual labour. Then if you want some data crunching, why not use Upwork hire someone in Bangladesh/Philippines etc to do the whole job ? At a low price, that's still way ahead of average learnings in their country.

At lunch time, I wondered outside & encountered numerous dining options. Including 2 Mexican places next door to each other & one directly across the road. At just after 12:00, the Franca Manca had zero customers (disclosure: small long position in Fulham Shore). Seems to be plenty of supply in this sector.

Andrew L

2nd Apr '18

A somewhat harsh assessment!!! I thought the Student task thing was great: toptask. The students do things like logo design. I agree though that a lot of the presentations etc were bizzare. I think the oil company Total gave a talk. The Mellon thing at a higher £25 price came across as profiteering. The event seems to have become fairly corporate. However, there were lots of people there. Good for Fidelity no doubt who sponsored it. But not sure if the event was really for private investors i.e. people who invest in individual stocks.

jonesj

2nd Apr '18

Ref: Toptask
I'm not at all convinced that the logo design, data crunching, or whatever else you can get done on Toptask would be any better than what you can already get done on Upwork. I've used the latter with some success, particularly for tasks like extracting & tabulating finance data. I see no need to move from Upwork.

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Master Investor 2018 (17 March)

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Jonesj

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