Tag Archives: CMT

On the Road to Fargo

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Did you know that our name CFA Society Minnesota only tells 90% of the story? While the bulk of our membership indeed resides in the Twin Cities, we have healthy and thriving communities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota and Fargo, North Dakota. This broad footprint provides great opportunities to put investor’s first around the region.

Carol Schleif, CFA, Diane Senjem, Mark Salter and I took a trip up I-94 to the City of Far More, spending a day and a half in Fargo with Society members, local investment industry leaders, and students from North Dakota State University (NDSU). The centerpiece of the trip was the second annual rendition of “Navigating the Financial Markets,” a joint event between NDSU and the Society. About 200 current and future leaders watched as Jim Bianco, CMT tried to convince all that expansions get murdered instead of dying a natural death, Matthew Finn, CFA reflected on current versus future state of the industry, and Carol Schleif, CFA discussed having a long-term focus and gave ideas on hard vs. soft skills.

Prior to the keynote event we were invited to a meeting between the NDSU Bison Fund and their advisory board. Students in the Bison Fund manage a series of multi-asset investment portfolios, spending most of their time on in-depth bottom’s up equity research. Sitting through the meeting I came away impressed by the commitment of the faculty, advisory board and students, and I found myself reminiscing about my own experiences in a student run fund … twenty years ago in Fairbanks, Alaska. I must say that these students are much better prepared than I was at that stage of life, and I made myself a note to see how I might be able to give guidance to my old fund now that I’m on the other side.

To wrap up the first night we were joined for dinner by members of the Bison Fund, faculty at NDSU and leaders in the investment community. The good food brought people together, as is often the case. As we settled in, we shared our experiences, provided thoughts on the future of the industry, listened to struggles of taking path A or path B, and harkened back to the day when we faced those same crossroads.

On the second day we invited a smaller group, comprised of CFA Charterholder members and candidates, to breakfast to discuss global, regional and local CFA Charter Initiatives. The group also touched on ways to further the CFA Charter in Fargo and Sioux Falls including additional program opportunities and efforts to increase awareness and the candidate pipeline.

To close our time out west, Carol met with a group of young women who started a Women in Business Club at NDSU hoping to get to 10 attendees. They blew away that initial goal and have 80 members; the future is bright!

Our mission – advance professional excellence while promoting ethical behavior and fellowship through development and engagement opportunities for our members – is critical no matter where CFA Charterholders reside. While it is challenging to connect across the vast landscape, we are always up for a challenge!

If any of the above commentary sparks an interest in you to connect with our friends in the Dakotas, or if you reside in any of these areas and would like to learn how you can help out, please send our Executive Director, Mark Salter a note at executivedirector@cfamn.org

-Tom

2018 Annual Dinner Recap

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By Elliot Smallidge, a student at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management, Class of 2019

I was ecstatic when I heard about the opportunity to see Professor Jeremy Siegel speak. As the highly acclaimed author of Stocks for the Long Run, I knew that Dr. Siegel’s lecture would complement everything I had learned in school. His take on investing would corroborate the conclusions of class after countless class: buy and hold stocks because you can’t beat the market. I arrived at the Minnesota CFA Society Annual Dinner eagerly awaiting his remarks.

Dr. Siegel contracted the flu and was forced to withdraw on short notice. Replacing him would be Doug Ramsey, CIO at Leuthold Weeden Capital. This change of speaker didn’t just shake up my night, but rather my entire perspective on investing.

Every undergraduate portfolio management class teaches that markets are efficient. No amount of fundamental analysis, and especially not technical analysis, could give an investor a sustainable edge. Enter Doug Ramsey, CFA, CMT, and master of market technicals.

His remarks upended everything I had learned in class about investing. Never had I seen anyone seriously attempt to understand markets by examining patterns in the relationships between various economic data in the way that Mr. Ramsey did. His opening comments centered on what he called the eight “Bellweather” indices. Displaying a chart of the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and several sub-sectors, Mr. Ramsey pointed out that every sector (except utilities) had trended upward in unison through January 26; the market was rising broadly across all industries. In a further analysis, we broke the S&P into deciles based on market capitalization and found a similar result: strong stock performance across the board. This pattern, Ramsey explained, has historically indicated not the peak of a bull market, but rather an average of 59 more prosperous weeks.

All my life I learned that there was no science to historical trends, yet here it was so clear before me. I will admit, some of Mr. Ramsey’s further analysis went a bit over my head, but his message has stuck with me. I now know that, however unpredictable the markets are, I cannot discount the value of patterns in historical data.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. Ramsey the next week at his office. In a phrase, the theme of our conversation was trust yourself. News outlets and publications are important, but at the end of the day, he cautioned me, your own analysis and critical thinking are the most valuable assets.

Although I did not have the chance to hear Dr. Siegel speak, my experience at the Annual Dinner altered my perspective on investing and opened my eyes to a brand new skill set in a way that I never could have imagined.

Thank you, Doug Ramsey and CFA Society Minnesota, for this wonderful opportunity.