Circle of Competence

If there’s anyone left reading the blog, and I know you’re out there, I want to extend an offer to you.

As I mentioned last year, I am now gainfully employed by Complete Growth Investor, LLC as a portfolio manager and analyst. So far I’ve picked six stocks for the service - one which has been announced free to the public, that is Premier Exhibitions (PRXI), currently down from our average cost of $1.79 but with a lot going for it, and some terrific recent news.  The other five are all up between 7% and, this is not a typo, 335%, from our average cost.  Of course to find out what they are, ya gotta sign up.

I’ve explained some of my earlier failures on this very blog. So let’s bring Jeff down to earth by remembering such gems as First Marblehead (FMD), FBR Group, and American Home Mortgage. Indeed, such is the cumulative learning process of investing. The mistakes one makes early, if they are good learners, are not repeated as times goes on. FBR was one of my very first investments — losing my shirt taught me a good deal about analysis and risk.

Back to the deal. On October 23rd through October 25th, CGI is holding a weekend in Las Vegas with some excellent speakers and panels, yours truly included.  Among the speakers will be Jim Gillies, of Motley Fool Fame, Matthew Richey, Co-Manager of the Centaur Value Fund which has made beating the market look like child’s play since 2003, John Del Vecchio, a short side manager for a $1 billion fund at Ranger Investments, and Ori Eyal, of Emerging Value Capital Management, which rose 27% from October 2008 (his inception) to July 2009, the last numbers reported. Not a bad selection of speakers…

In addition, Tom Jacobs, myself, Jason Fitnitch, Ragu Chandrasekaran (his blog is riskvsrewardinvesting.blogspot.com), and Shane P. of NoiseFreeInvesting.com fame, will all be there among the panelists talking about CGI, stocks, and anything else we can think of.

We’ve had a tremendous response so far but I wanted to get some of my old blog readers to the event as well.  Here’s what you can do: go here and register for the event for $199. Then, send customerservice@completegrowth.com an e-mail and tell them you are a reader of Jeff’s Circle of Competence blog, and we’ll send you a $100 refund, half the price of the event.  Any friends or family you bring along are only $99 as well.

If you need a place to stay, that link includes information about the Platinum Hotel. Since we’re bringing so many people to their establishment, everyone who registers for CGI Las Vegas will get a special rate of $129 per night. These are 900 sq. ft suites in a beautiful Las Vegas hotel, not a run down motel in the desert, I promise.

I hope to see some of you there! If you have any questions, e-mail me at jeffa  @  completegrowth . com.