VIRTUAL INVESTOR CONFERENCE: September 30-October 1

We bring the top minds from the financial industry (and passionate individual investors like you) to converge into a powerful digital experience that can help you find relevant answers in today’s — and tomorrow’s — market.

THE SPEAKERS

Just some of the speakers at our 25 investment seminars that will teach you how to find winning stocks, develop successful strategies and protect your portfolio.

THE AGENDA

Beyond the talks we will feature many events that will give you an opportunity to network.

THE TICKETS

25 investment seminars, pre-conference boot camps, free recordings of all presentations and community meetups

THE SPONSORS

Thank you to our Gold Sponsor: Discover Bank

© Copyright 2022 American Association of Individual Investors

Sign-Up for the Virtual Conference

Conference and Our New Boot Camps

Sign-Up for the Virtual Conference

Conference and Our New Boot Camps

(boot camps on September 29)

THE SESSIONS

Using Income Annuities in Retirement

Presented by Aaron Brask

This presentation focuses on income annuities. Aaron Brask first describes what they are and how they differ from other ‘bad’ annuity products. Then he delves into how carriers price them (e.g., embedded costs) and the mechanics of how they are taxed. Lastly, he pulls this together by sharing a simple retirement income application and highlighting the overall cost and tax benefits.

➤ The basics of income annuities

➤ The logic behind pricing and taxation

➤ Potential cost and tax benefits from using income annuities

Keynote: Money After Retirement

Presented by Terry Savage

Retirement should be a peak — not a financial cliff!  Start planning now for predictable income, changing investment risk tolerance, unexpected costs, and making your money last your lifetime.

➤ Gain financial perspective

➤ Get you financial life organized

➤ Become empowered to resist costly sales pitches

Bond Investing in a Low-Interest-Rate Environment

Presented by Brian Haughey

Interest rates are historically low, and yet bond market risk has arguably never been higher. What should a bond investor be concerned about, and what strategies might an individual investor want to consider in the current environment?

➤ The risks bond investors currently face

➤ How to read the economic environment

➤ How to identify opportunities

Lessons the Market Taught in 2020

Presented by Larry Swedroe

Each year the market provides lessons on the prudent investment strategy. Many years it provides remedial courses, lessons it taught in prior years. Sadly, many investors fail to learn. As a whole, 2020 provided more investment lessons than the typical year.

➤ That you should not take more risk than you have the ability, willingness or need to take

➤ To expect the unexpected and build that risk into your plan

➤ How bonds are for safety, not income

Keynote: More Straight Talk on Investing: Getting to Boca

Presented by Jack Brennan

Former Vanguard CEO Jack Brennan cuts through the noise and hype in today’s markets by espousing a sound and simple investment approach based on balance, diversification, discipline, low costs and a long-term orientation. A 40-year veteran of the financial markets, Brennan shares the invaluable lessons he has learned from investors during his career, punctuated by illuminating anecdotes and compelling evidence. Whether your dream is getting to Boca Raton for retirement, leaving a generous bequest or traveling the world, Brennan provides the roadmap for reaching your long-term goals.

➤ How to develop a sound investment portfolio

➤ How to deal with a low-rate environment

➤ How to evaluate financial advice options

Making Sense of ETFs

Presented by Elisabeth Kashner

Elisabeth Kashner discusses exchange-traded fund (ETF) due diligence, as well as how to cover holding costs and risks. She looks at ETF trading, and economic exposure, with an emphasis on the long term.

➤ How to evaluate ETF costs and risks

➤ How to measure relative economic risk

➤ How to prioritize among efficiency, tradability and fit

The New Retirement Savings Time Bomb: 5 Easy Steps to Take Control, Avoid Unnecessary Taxes & Combat the Latest Threats to Your Retirement Savings

Presented by Ed Slott

Taxes will be the single biggest factor that separates people from their retirement dreams. Americans have invested trillions of dollars in retirement plans, turning them into the biggest, most valuable assets they own—often worth more than even their homes. But these accounts also typically have a huge unpaid debt facing them at future tax rates upon distribution, creating looming uncertainty about how much of your hard-earned money you actually get to keep. Protect the assets you’ve spent a lifetime building from excessive taxation with insights from Ed Slott’s completely updated bestseller “The New Retirement Savings Time Bomb” (2021). Learn how to disarm this ticking tax time bomb in five easy steps.

➤ About the ticking tax time bomb in your retirement savings accounts

➤ The secret to having more, keeping more and making your savings last

➤ The five steps to disarming the retirement savings tax time bomb

Helping Your Kids/Grandkids Build a Diversified Portfolio

Presented by Craig Israelsen

This presentation is a “why-to” and “how-to” about investing for normal people on a normal budget. In particular, Craig Israelsen focuses on how to help our kids and grandkids get started as investors. He also discusses several behavioral aspects of investing that separate successful investors from frenetic investors. Turns out that investing is an effective teacher of life lessons, if we do it thoughtfully. It’s also important to help our kids and grandkids develop a healthy perspective about money, because money is a magnifier. Money magnifies virtues as well as vices. Possessing a healthy philosophy toward money and investing is more important than the gritty details of investing.

➤ How to help our kids/grandkids develop a healthy philosophy toward investing

➤ The essential attributes of building a diversified portfolio

➤ About actionable portfolios that our kids and grandkids can easily build

Investor Insights: Tips and Tools for Smarter Investing

Presented by Christine Kieffer

There’s no denying that securities markets today look different than they did decades ago—or even just a dozen years ago. Join the FINRA Foundation for a discussion of emerging trends, tips for keeping track of your investments, strategies for spotting and avoiding fraud and tools offered by financial regulators to help you become a smarter, more informed investor.

➤ Tips for smarter investing

➤ Core misconceptions about cryptocurrency and bitcoin

➤ About free, unbiased resources from regulators

What If This Turns Out to Be a Terrible Time to Retire?

Presented by Christine Benz

Low bond yields and elevated equity valuations suggest that new retirees are confronting a challenging environment. This presentation discusses some of these headwinds and shares strategies for troubleshooting them at the portfolio and financial plan levels.

➤ How “sequencing risk” can affect the success of a retirement plan

➤ Non-portfolio risk factors that retirees face

➤ How to assess the tools for troubleshooting these risks

2 Funds for Life: A Quest for Simple & Effective Investing Strategies

Presented by Chris Pedersen

Investing doesn’t have to be complex to be effective. This presentation explores a range of prudent and effective ways to invest for a lifetime with only two funds. Chris Pedersen shows how these simple approaches can match or beat more complex ones. By combining a target-date fund and a diversifying second small-cap value fund, you can manage risk, increase safe retirement spending, increase money left to charity and heirs and reduce the risk of running out of money before running out of life.

➤ How target-date funds facilitate age-appropriate risk

➤ How to augment target-date funds for better outcomes

➤ The risks and benefits of 2 Funds for Life approaches

Strong Start, Favorable Finish

Presented by Sam Stovall

Year to date through April 30, the S&P Equal Weight 500 index jumped 16.2%, recording the third-strongest four-month start to any year since 1990. History says (but does not guarantee), that such early strength is typically followed by a volatile performance through September, before resuming its above-average advance during the remaining three months of the year. Will the same hold true for 2021? And what is the outlook for 2022?

➤ How early-in-the-year gains typically result in above-average full-year returns

➤ How second years in the presidential cycle are usually the most challenging for equity investors

➤ How leaning cyclically from November through April should be profitable

Warren Buffett: Inside the Ultimate Money Mind

Presented by Robert Hagstrom

This presentation is an examination of the philosophical underpinnings of Warren Buffett’s investment approach, what he calls a “Money Mind.” What exactly is a Money Mind? it summarizes an overall mindset for successful investing in today’s fast-paced stock market, a mindset that depends on commitment to learning, adapting and facing down irrelevant noise.

➤ The philosophical influences who shaped Warren Buffett’s investment thinking

➤ The three phases of the evolution of value investing

➤ How to develop a business-driven mindset that operates in the investment zone while tuning out the market zone

AAII’s New Essential Investing Principles & Strategies Course:   Learning the Strategies

Presented by Raymond Rondeau

Long-term successful investors have a plan and the discipline to follow it. A major component of a successful plan is the effectiveness of its strategies. In this presentation Raymond Rondeau covers a few of the featured strategies that will comprise AAII’s new Essential Investment Principles & Strategies video course. Strategy-related coverage areas include: strategy reasoning, methodology and interpretation, how to set them up (online for free), extensive performance statistics, guidance on monitoring the signals and where, when and how to transact.

➤ A number of effective investment strategies, including their reasoning and detailed statistics for validations

➤ The key market signals for selecting more efficient entry and exit prices

➤ How to construct an investment strategy that is right for you

20 Things You Should Know About Small-Cap Value

Presented by Paul Merriman

The small-cap value (SCV) asset class is considered the gold ring of long-term investing. The session is designed to help investors select SCV funds that will perform the best in the long term. Learn why some of the most profitable SCV funds become the worst performers, and how combining SCV with three other U.S. asset classes can more than double the long-term return of the S&P 500 index at virtually the same risk. Investing for a child or grandchild? Learn how $365 a year for 10 years could produce over $1 million per year in retirement income.

➤ The pros and cons of small-cap value funds

➤ How to select the best-performing small-cap value funds

➤ How to combine small-cap value with other asset classes

How Much Do I Need to Retire?

Presented by Roger Young

It’s the million-dollar (or more) question: what do I need to have saved before I can retire confidently? The answer depends on a variety of factors—your spending and saving habits, income sources, asset mix, Social Security, taxes—even your marital status. We explore the calculations, as well as the behavioral side: how to think about a retirement vision and ways to stay on track.

➤ Understand how your financial situation, habits and other factors affect how much money you should accumulate before retirement.

➤ Learn how to go beyond simple rules of thumb to estimate your own target.

➤ Start thinking about your vision for retirement, and how it relates to the financial side.

Responding to Tax Law Changes & Challenges

Presented by Kelly Phillips Erb

In 2017, the National Taxpayer Advocate reported to Congress that there have been almost 5,900 changes to the tax code since 2001 – an average of more than one a day.    Since then, Congress has made even more changes, including the TCJA, the CARES Act, and the American Relief Plan. Additional changes could be on the way with the G20 corporate minimum tax proposal, the American Families Plan, and a focus on crypto.    In this session, we’ll take a look - in plain English - at some of the most significant changes and proposals, as well as some strategies for minimizing tax bites.

➤ Gain an awareness of recent tax law changes.

➤ Understand proposed changes - and the likelihood that they'll become law.

➤ Consider new tax moves for 2021 and beyond.

How to Build a Diversified Cryptocurrency Portfolio

Presented by Steven Ehrlich

As the cryptocurrency and digital asset industries continue to mature as an investment class, many are asking questions about how to construct diversified portfolios that offer upside potential but hedge against risk. This session will cover all of the basics necessary to invest with confidence.

➤ What gives cryptocurrency assets value

➤ Core misconceptions about cryptocurrency and bitcoin

➤ Strategies for portfolio construction

AAII Investor Boot Camps: September 29

Learn from our leading financial analysts.