Reuters – It’s the Value Investing Congress today and tomorrow, I’m not sure whether I’m going to be able to make it at all, but you can be sure that lots of financial journalists will be filing breathless reports about various celebrity hedge fund managers’ investment ideas, and that the actual delegates at the conference will be even more excited about the prospect of getting to be in the same room as these multimillionaire investment stars.
It’s a highly artificial environment, where fund managers get to present their best case for why a given stock is undervalued. And if there’s one lesson to learn from going to this event, it’s that successful fund managers are also highly-accomplished salesmen. They’re fantastic at telling stories, and by the time their presentation is over, you’re all but phoning up your broker on the spot, telling him to buy as much as he possibly can.
