BI > FEBRUARY 2003

Wine and Elvis in Seattle

700 Investing Fans Can't Be Wrong

Editor's note: As a complement to this month's listing of Investors Fairs, NAIC educator Brian Lewis provides a summary of the Puget Sound Chapter's most recent Western Washington Investors & Computer Fair. Brian's article showcases the fun and educational opportunities available at these events -- even when the market's down. The editors of Better Investing thank Brian for sharing his experiences.

The stock market has been down for more than two years, and Washington state's unemployment rate is among the highest in the nation. That was the backdrop for the Western Washington Investors & Computer Fair, held Friday, Nov. 15, and Saturday, Nov. 16, 2002, in the Puget Sound (Seattle) area.

But it takes more than wind, rain and economic woes to daunt Seattle-area residents. Here are some of the fair's highlights.

A Visit to the Wine With Attitude Investment Club

At NAIC's National Congress & Expo in Portland, Ore., Puget Sound Director Gary Ordway talked with Bob Philipps, the investor relations representative from the Robert Mondavi Corporation. Members of Gary's club, the Wine With Attitude Investment Club, not only are investors but also are wine aficionados, and he was hoping for some help from this winemaking company to liven up a future club meeting.

Gary got a lot more than he bargained for. Robert Mondavi was a sponsor of the Puget Sound event, and Philipps offered to personally visit Gary's club the day after the fair. He gave a great presentation, including a winetasting, then everyone discussed a current Stock Selection Guide on Mondavi.

Roundtable "Dinner"

Similar to roundtables at NAIC's national events, Puget Sound held a discussion that was scheduled near the fair's dinner hour on Friday. People could either take an extended dinner or bring food into a big auditorium for a Q&A. This annual session is pretty popular, so quite a few people grabbed something from nearby or ate quickly afterward so as to hear our all-star panel of Bob Adams, Corry DalMaso and Mark Robertson.

We like to change the topic each year; this time we discussed "Club Dynamics." There were some great questions; Corry always volunteered to answer the ones he called the "Dear Abby" variety -- besides providing helpful answers, the panel had a lot of fun with this one.

New Classes

One secret to holding a successful fair is having new classes each time. Each year we get some feedback on how we can do better, but one criticism we don't feel too badly about is when people complain that they can't make all the classes they would like to. We would rather provide too much great content than too little.

In the most recent fair, half of our classes weren't offered in 2001, and several of them had never been taught in Puget Sound before. These included a class by Dan Rutter on REITs, a class on data that I adapted from a CompuFest presentation by the Denver Chapter's Saul Seinberg, and our "Three Directors Present" offering.

Three Directors Present

This is a case of shamelessly lifting a good idea from one of the national events. At CompuFest 2001 we saw a presentation called the "Better Investing Stock Selection Committee." Bill Skelly, our chapter president and new associate director on NAIC's Computer Group Advisory Board, suggested we try something similar to it at our fair.

It worked well for us. Three chapter directors presented stocks of their choosing, focusing on how each arrived at the key judgments in completing the SSG. Audience members were told ahead of time that they could vote at the end on which stock they believed was the best purchase at the time.

The point here wasn't to get stock tips or anything. The vote was just to help everyone pay close attention.

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Elvis Sighting

Perhaps the most fun came on Saturday when Mark Robertson (the guy whose face is on the inside back cover of every issue of Better Investing) gave his keynote speech. Mark had already done a stellar job of teaching some classes for us the day before, participating in our roundtable discussion and hanging out in the computer lab and elsewhere to talk to fair attendees. But he delivered even more when at his presentation, out walked Elvis.

The jet-black hair. The sunglasses. The white sequined jumper. The red cape and scarf. "Elvis" opened his talk by saying: "Ah couldn't get to sleep at all last night. Does that make me 'Sleepless in Seattle?'" I laughed so hard I thought I would injure myself.

Numbers Are Down, But . . .

In the interests of full disclosure, I should admit that attendance at our fair was down again in 2002. We had something like 800 attendees in 2001, and at last count 2002 attendance was about 700. In the "glory days" (not that long ago) we pulled in well over 1,000.

But let's measure this against the stock market, shall we? In 2000, by the time our fair rolled around, the market had already fallen off a bit from the year's highs in March and August. Our numbers were off some too, down to about 1,000. In 2001 the S&P 500 was off 26 percent from that previous high, and we were down 20 percent further to about 800 attendees -- still the biggest regional fair in the country. For the 2002 fair, the market was off an additional 19 percent or so, but our drop-off in attendance was less severe.

I don't want to make too much of these rough numbers, but from conversations with attendees and the caliber of questions they asked, I think the 700 or so that came to our fair in 2002 was a more solid "core" group that's better able to ride out the downturns. People coming to our fairs these days know that when the prices of good stocks are driven down, that's the time to buy, not the time to give up on the stock market.

An Outstanding Group of People

The key factor in our success is having an outstanding group of volunteers. Gary Ball, our former chapter president who's also a director on the national NIA board, led a successful effort last year to bring new blood into our board of directors. Our new directors did a truly wonderful job with the fair.

Puget Sound has a pretty full slate of national directors, and our fair chairman in 2002 was Bob Adams, vice president for education of NAIC's Computer Group Advisory Board. A lot of credit for the fair goes to the organizational skills of Bob and of Bill Skelly.

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Having a Baby Didn't Faze Her

Teri Caldwell may not have completely thought through the timing of her pregnancy when she accepted the job of handling registration for the fair. On balance we're glad she didn't, because she had the baby and didn't seem to miss a step in organizing one of the tougher aspects of a big fair.

Jim Thomas did a fantastic job of setting up a network in our computer lab. We were able to pay about the same amount as we had in previous years for just one or two connections, which were sufficient to provide fast Internet connection to all 18 of our lab computers. Based on some additional testing by Jim, we hope we can bring live Internet connection to all our classes in 2003, too (we're crossing our fingers).

The fair was fun to put on, and fun to attend, too. We've already started discussing ideas for the 2003 fair, when we hope we can bring our attendance number back up -- even if the stock market doesn't help us out.

A member since 1994, Brian Lewis is the President of the Puget Sound Chapter. He's a founding member of BetterInvesting's Online Investor's School and has presented a number of classes online. Brian has taught a variety of classes in the Seattle area since 1999 as well as at the BetterInvesting National Convention, and has published several articles in BITS and BetterInvesting Magazine. He can be contacted at brianle@nwlink.com.