and hold strategy for the most part. The company’s analysts look at stocks, settling on ones with long term growth potential. He said Visa is in a great position as the entire world continues to migrate from cash to credit. The company makes its money on the transaction with very little risk. And he said the size of the market in which Visa, and a few other players, are operating, is so large that there is virtually no fear of new entrants to the space. Aptiv is involved in building component parts for autonomous driving. If, like Tran, you believe self-driving cars and trucks are the future, this company is poised to reap benefits. Tran also likes U-Haul for both its equipment rental and self-storage product lines. He said both of those are growth services and U-Haul’s approach of converting empty retail spaces to self-storage units is a low cost way to grow its business. Alpert discussed his company’s investment strategy, which he boiled down to investing in high-quality companies that over perform in the paying of annual dividends. He said that strategy outperforms the market by a significant amount over the long term. He explained that over a long period of time, dividends, on average, account for about 50 percent of total return of any stock purchase. Consequently, that should be a very important factor in picking the stocks to invest in. “Companies that pay dividends do better and make better decisions,” he said.
Daymond John speaks at the Chairman's Lunch.
He gave Donald Trump mixed reviews with the current president’s tax cuts getting very high marks but his protectionist trade policy earning Laffer’s disdain. Future of Finance Another educational session that was very well received dealt with investment strategies and the economy. The WG Annual Meeting has featured similar sessions in the past and this one was back again by popular demand. The panelists were Ashley Kennefick of Fidelity Institutional, Quoc Tran of Lateef Investments and Richard Alpert of Raub Brock Capital Management. They each brought a different set of investment strategies to the table as well as varying views on the U.S. economy and how it might perform moving forward. At the November event, Kennefick reported that there is too much uncertainty in the marketplaces, especially surrounding trade issues and consumer spending. She said this has led business to slow down its spending. She also noted that historically, the U.S. economy is overdue for a contraction as history proves that financial strength runs in cycles. She did note that current economic conditions—including low unemployment, low energy prices, and improved personal savings—are very good. And she added that Fidelity is cautiously optimistic about the near-term economic future.
She said that what the Federal Reserve does with interest rates is important but that Fidelity does not believe cutting the interest rate, as President Trump has advocated, will stimulate spending. As he has done in the past Tran singled out a few noteworthy stocks to explain how his firm invests in the marketplace. For this seminar, he discussed Visa, Aptiv and U-Haul as solid long-term stock picks. Lateef only trades in a narrow group of stocks at any one time employing a buy
Finance workshop panelists Ashley Kennefick, Quoc Tran and Richard Alpert are joined by Arthur Laffer (far left).
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JANUARY | FEBRUARY 2020
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