Francis Chou to Speak At Ivey Value Conference

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 Richard Ivey School of Business CAVIE

Anyone with an interest in finding value investments should mark their calendars for these interesting and important value investor conferences in 2013.

The Ben Graham Centre for Value Investing at the Richard Ivey School of Business (The University of Western Ontario) will hold its 2013 conference April 10. The event will be held at the Royal York Hotel in Toronto. Investors don’t want to miss the opportunity to learn about value investments, presented by Canada’s most prominent business school.

The second event that we’re excited about is the July 15-19 Center for the Advancement of Value Investing Education (CAVIE)’s seminar, which will also be held in Toronto. Of special interest, is the July 19 lecture that will include famous value investor, Francis Chou, of Chou Associates Management Inc. The topic of the seminar is Value Investing and the Search for Value.

Let’s take a look.

Ben Graham Center for Value Investing

This conference promotes Benjamin Graham’s tenets of value investing and allows conference participants to review various value investing methods used by practitioners. It also discusses academic research and the study of value investing while offering a forum that explains, discusses and debates value investing principles from a global context.

The conference will include a panel of corporate executives, who will provide an industry perspective on how to look for value creating opportunities and yes, how to create value.

The event will feature Gary Shilling as the morning speaker and Jeremy Grantham as the luncheon speaker; the value investor panel will include industry leaders such as Francis Chou, Tim McElvaine, Robert Robotti and Tom Russo.

To learn more about these esteemed speakers, take a look at their biographies.

CAVIE

Because the competition for portfolio management jobs and alpha are extremely competitive, the search for value, valuation skills and an understanding of what create values are extremely important. This five-day seminar will provide the skill set as well as an understanding of value, which are both necessary to win against the competition.

The information presented during this sought-after seminar will marry the gap between theory,  practice and hands-on training.

The seminar will also discuss the search for the value process, how to potentially find underpriced securities and why underpricing exists in the financial markets.

It will also cover the following:

  • How to determine the intrinsic value of a stock and invest in truly undervalued stocks
  • Alternative methods for constructing a portfolio that controls for risk without restricting investment returns
  • Applications – Valuing and investing in real life companies

For more information about the seminar, please take a look here.

The one thing that both these events have in common is that they will feature insights from Francis Chou, (read his full biographical information) the president of Toronto-based Chou Associates Management Inc. Chou ended his formal education at Grade 12, and started his investment education career while working as a phone company technician in 1981 when he began an investment club; this subsequently became the Associates Fund.

For the last 20 years, Chou has operated two of Canada’s most successful funds, Chou Associates Fund and Chou RRSP fund. In 2005, the Canadian Investment Award named him the fund manager of the decade. He says his approach is to “find bargains and maintain discipline; if you cannot find bargains stay in cash.”

In 2012, Chou managed $650 million-plus for investors in his firm and according to the Wall Street Journal, he runs the best performing bond fund in North America.

 

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