AAII Pittsburgh Chapter
Meeting Archive

Presentations beginning with the November 8, 2008 AAII Pittsburgh Chapter meeting are available to download when the speaker provides us with an electronic version of the presentation. The meeting list has the most recent presentation at the top of the list.

Archived presentations are also available from the Chapter's Yahoo group

Previous Meetings

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Paul Townsend - All I Needed to Know About the Stock Market I Learned in Kindergarten

Paul Townsend will discuss the point and figure method of technical analysis. He will discuss investing in various asset classes including domestic and international stocks, sectors, commodities and currencies. Emphasis will be placed on the use of relative strength as a risk management tool. Paul will also share how to create a customized "tactical" portfolio using exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Paul Grems Duncan - Combining Money Management, Portfolio Metrics and Strategies for Investing and Trading

There is more to investing than just your bank account balance, and appropriate measurements can help you understand whether you are taking too much risk for the gains you are achieving. This presentation will focus on metrics for managing money. Specifically. we will discuss how to benchmark your holdings with respect to gain and drawdown. We will illustrate this technique with actual portfolio implementations and an Excel workbook that exercises the formulas involved. We will discuss stock selection within different strategies and will demonstrate the process using optimized moving averages and effective-volume concepts.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Audrey H. Kaplan - Intelligent International Investing: Choose your countries carefully

The now-classic mantra of diversity works well across global stock markets: A varied international equity portfolio (more than 40-50 stocks) can eliminate most of an investor's stock-specific risk. Of the remaining volatility (risk), however, research shows that decisions regarding country and currency account for the bulk.

Analysis also reveals that variance of returns is wider among countries than among industries, which observation further supports the importance of country selection. Between any two international-fund managers, in fact, country-allocations account for most performance differences. Finally, macroeconomic events - the most recent example being the European sovereign-debt crisis - have also influenced returns over the past few years and only emphasized international differences.

To maximize international returns, even investors holding diversified portfolios can gain from a systematic approach to country allocation. Audrey Kaplan will delve further into this philosophy and outline a process designed to capture alpha through informed, top-down decisions. She will describe how to select countries with the strongest fundamentals and then find the best stocks within those markets. Join us to master this strategy and improve your own performance.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Ian Abbott - Invest like a professional: Apply risk-management

Because some financial newsletters have compiled outstanding records over several years, many investors rely on the top-ranked ones for investing advice. Some of the winners, as ranked by the Hulbert Financial Digest, include No Load Fund X, The Chartist, and websites such as ETFscreen and Decision Moose.

One selection method that newsletters commonly employ is multiperiod performance ranking, which identifies stocks that have done the best over recent months or years. This talk focuses on the methods used by such top-ranked advisors and shows how you can actually improve on the basic results by adding an extra dimension of safety to your investing procedure!

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Philip J. Orlando, CFA - 2011 and Beyond: Is the Recovery Sustainable?

Has the U.S. economy merely encountered a soft patch on the road to recovery? Or is it headed toward a double-dip recession? Phil Orlando, Chief Equity Market Strategist at Federated Investors, will share his firm's market forecast. His presentation will include a discussion of what to expect in a housing market recovery, the employment situation, and interest rates. Attendees will learn Federated's forecast for stocks vs. bonds, the private vs. public sector, and recommended investment allocation model-including suggested sector weightings.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Herb Geissler - Bottom Fishing for Profits

Investors get upset when the stock market corrects twice each year, dropping about 10% in the spring and more than 20% in the fall. Sharp traders view these corrections as opportunities to buy good stocks at discount prices.  First they anticipate when the market is about to roll down so they can lock in previous long gains. Second, they determine when the bottoming is over and buy stocks at a bargain, anticipating the next upsurge. Third, they identify when the upsurge is over, lock in profits and move on to other strategies. At this meeting, Herb will discuss specific indicators for pinpointing market tops and market bottoms, as well as how to identify the best individual stocks to bottom-fish.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Jon D. Markman - Swing Trading

In today's nerve-wracking stock market, savvy investors can improve their batting average by shortening up on their swing. After identifying a good stock for purchase through fundamental and price/volume analysis, winning swing traders determine an advantageous point to buy, then avoid hanging on during the inevitable reversals. Swing traders take their profits within weeks or months, and close out losers even faster, to redeploy funds into fresh opportunities.  Doing so keeps losses small, while winning trades keep running up the score. The trouble with the future, after all, is that there is too much of it. The longer you hold a successful stock, the more that can go wrong with it.

Jon Markman will describe the key elements for successful swing trading, step by step. He will demonstrate several of his favorite setups for profitable trades and provide guidelines for position management. Jon is one of our most popular speakers, and you should not miss this outstanding presentation.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Donald Cassidy - Improving Your Skills in the Fine Art of Selling

Investors typically find buying stocks easier than selling them. Don Cassidy this evening will examine and illustrate key challenges individuals face in selling profitably and will offer an antidote to “buy-and-hope” propaganda. His talk on this subject at the 2009 AAII National Conference drew a crowd of over 200.

Don’s behavioral-finance approach will focus on what makes selling hard and how to overcome its problems. He will describe practical solutions, outline a procedural checklist, and provide concrete suggestions on setting sell-rules and avoiding common mistakes.

PRE-MEETING: Larry Coudriet - Neuroeconomics Can Make Your Rich

Few activities make intelligent, educated people feel so stupid as does investing. Tonight’s presentation offers insights from the emerging field of neuroeconomics—blending neuroscience, psychology, and economics—that strives to understand better how our minds function and how to reign in self-defeating impulses. Come and see examples how we as investors daily balance the “thinking” and “feeling” parts of our minds; how anticipating gain (greed?) can warp our decisions; how we make predictions; how we rate (and overrate) our skills; and how we’re feelingright now can affect our assessment of risk.

March 16, 2010

Mary Ann Davis - Increase Your Income with Covered Calls

Writing covered-call options against securities you already own provides a way to generate income, a tactic particularly useful in the present period of low interest rates. Writing covered-call options is a conservative strategy, in contrast to the speculative approach of buying options.

Mary Ann will fully explain the philosophy behind a call-writing program and will demonstrate detailed examples of how the process works. Her presentation will include the ways she personally practices this art. She will discuss the added income return rates available and will show that these can be maximized by selling calls fairly near to maturity several times per year.

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PRE-MEETING: Herb Geissler - Surviving the Bear

While winter is almost over, the Bear has been awake and growling in the equity markets for months, and we should expect him to dominate for quite a while. As Herb Geissler shows in tonight's "Basic Training" session, investors need not hibernate for the duration, however. Herb will describe simple guidelines and techniques for exploiting investment opportunities and surviving the Secular Bear decade profitably.

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January 12, 2010

Charles A. Smith - Deleveraging and the Long Unwinding Road: We're Breathing Again ... But for How Long?

Discussion focused on several interrelated topics:

• If you overload the horse, he quits - A summary of policy efforts so far and their results, some intended, some not.
• The "couch potato" recession - How this recession is similar to, yet profoundly different from, the Great Depression.
• A job or a house, you choose! - Why are some local real estate markets crashing and some not? Pittsburgh vs Cleveland.
• Where are you Mr Banker? - The bankers are AWOL ... with good reason!
• Outlook for 2010 and key trends - Estimates of fair value for the S&P 500 for calendar year 2010.

November 17, 2009

Ronald H. Muhlenkamp – What’s the “New Normal”? — Economics, rules and markets

As investors suffered through a painful recession during the last two years, Ron Muhlenkamp has studied unfolding developments in the economy and financial markets. Starting from an analysis of recessions and bailouts, he has identified key signposts of the change, including various leading and lagging economic indicators.

During his presentation, Ron will continue that inquiry — examining shifts in consumer spending and corporate balance sheets, exploring credit markets and the state of financial institutions, discussing the Federal Reserve actions — and will begin to describe the “New Normal” and its implications for individual investors.

September 15, 2009

Janet Brown – Position Your Portfolio to Consider Changing Market Leadership: Upgrade to the Winning Funds and ETFs

The challenge: How do I make money in this year's frustrating, mercurial, market? How do I make up for last year's losses? At this meeting, Janet Brown will explain her Upgrade strategy - investing in those mutual funds and ETFs that currently lead the pack, staying with them as long as they continue to excel, and progressively moving to new leaders as they emerge.

March 17, 2009

Herb Geissler – The Only Three Questions That Count.

Are you ready to manage your own stock portfolio? Herb will show you how, with relatively little time and effort, you can consistently outperform more than 80% of the professional money managers. First, he will demonstrate “benchmarking” geared to your personal preferences and risk tolerance. Then he will show you how to consistently beat that benchmark by “answering the only three questions that count”.

January 20, 2009

Stuart Hoffman.

No electronic presentation available.

November 8, 2008

Tom McClellan – Understanding Market Liquidity.

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