Students Learn from Top Investors at Barron’s Roundtable

For the seventh consecutive year, students from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business joined some of Wall Street’s smartest investors for a Barron’s Roundtable.

Smith adjunct faculty member Joseph Rinaldi led the group to the Barron’s “Art of Successful Investing Conference,” Oct. 23, 2015, at the Metropolitan Club in New York City. Greg Faenza, senior finance and economics major; Qiuhan Yuan, a master of finance student; and Tianyi Leng, an intern with Quantum Financial Advisors, made the trek.

The headlining speakers included Roundtable regulars Felix Zulauf (Swiss-based Zulauf Asset Management), Scott Black (Delphi Management), Oscar Schafer (Rivulet Capital) and David Herro (International Equity). Also featured were William Priest of Epoch Investment Partners, Ross Margolies of Stelliam Investment Management, international-investing specialist Sarah Ketterer of Causeway Capital Management, and Jeffrey Gundlach of DoubleLine Capital (one of the world’s most successful bond investors, according to Barron’s).

Gundlach and his view of the Federal Reserve was particularly insightful, said Faenza, “including his point that concerns about one-to-two-percent global economic growth are legitimate and that Quantitative Easing can’t always be the solution.”

Yuan pointed to Fed and interest rate insight from another speaker, J.P. Morgan Fund’s Chief Global Strategist David Kelly, who lead her to believe the rate will not be raised, at least in 2016, because of uncertainty in the global economy.

Yuan drew insight into China from Russell Rhoads, senior instructor with the Options Institute at the Chicago Board Options Exchange. “I had thought it will take few more years for China to open the options market,” she said. But after speaking with Rhoads, she learned to expect option market expansion “in the near future.”

The students heard, from Zulauf, that the global market will be a cyclical bear market that could last from late 2016 to early 2017, said Leng. “[Zulauf] also pointed out that a banking crisis in Singapore and Hong Kong is very likely, and Canada is facing a housing bubble crisis like the one the U.S. experienced in 2007.”

From the speakers collectively, Yuan said she learned that “those professionals employ price-to-free cash flow as a multiple to assess stock performance.”

Experiential Value

Such real-world context makes “financial concepts easier to learn” and inspires greater appreciation “for variables, uncertainties and sometimes the occasional black swan event,” said Leng. 

Faenza said he does not take lightly the “privilege of unmatched networking with, and learning from, experienced money managers.” The conversations, he said, “alert you to the realities of where good investments will be in the next decade, and [in the context of the 2016 election] insight into where lawmakers might find common ground and where they probably won’t, as prospective legislation plays a key role in future investment strategies.”

Leng, concurred, saying the Barron’s speakers piqued her interest “into the intricacies of macroeconomic events interacting with financial markets.”