Overall:
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We welcome listener requests for guests they want to hear on the program, and those requests should be emailed to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. If you want to propose yourself as a guest, we don’t object to that, provided that you clearly disclose that the request is coming from the prospective guest or their friends/family/staff.
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We receive about a half dozen guest pitches from professional publicists every single day. So far, after 7 years and more than 350 episodes, we have yet to respond favorably to a single guest pitch from a hired publicist. We would hope that this information alone would be enough to persuade you that you’re wasting your time and ours by sending us a pitch, but we also know from experience that this won’t stop you from doing so. Accordingly, we request you observe the following guidelines:
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Smarter Markets is hosted by Podbean:
Subscribe to the Smarter Markets podcast using any of the following links.
You can manually add Smarter Markets to your Apple Podcast Player by followign these simple instructions.
On iOS:
- Open the Podcasts app.
- Tap Library.
- Tap Edit in the upper right corner, and then tap "Add a Show by URL..."
- Enter "https://feed.podbean.com/smartermarkets/feed.xml"
- Tap Subscribe.
On macOS:
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Also coming soon to the following:
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All the best,
Erik Townsend
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UPDATE: We had a problem with the first survey sent out last week. It was meant to use smart “logic” so that you would only be asked why you don’t like our proposed plan if you said you were not likely to attend. Similarly, it was only supposed to ask detailed questions about the VIP pass if you expressed interest in that option. Something went wrong and it asked the wrong people the wrong questions. Sorry!
We have a new survey now. Please complete the new survey, as it both fixes the problems with the first one, and also asks additional questions based on the feedback we received.
We were surprised by some of the responses we did receive. Many of you didn’t love the 3-day format we were considering, and asked us to consider something shorter. We also had several people express hesitation about Las Vegas, the city we were favoring when the first survey was written. In particular, we got the message loud and clear that people flying in from Europe were not excited about Las Vegas.
The new survey is designed to fix all of this. We’ll ask you whether you prefer a 2- or 3-day format and we’ll ask how you feel about Dallas or Miami as opposed to Las Vegas.
ORIGINAL OVERVIEW MESSAGE FROM 9/12:
After the extraordinary response we got to our first live event in Toronto, we’re working to design something really special for our second event. Specifically, we’re passionate about making this the only finance conference in the industry which is designed entirely around the desires of the attendees, as opposed to the usual business model where vendors, sponsors, and promoters control everything. Every speaker will be someone our audience wants to hear, and nobody will have the opportunity to “buy their way onto the stage”, as is the common practice at “pay to play” conferences.
Therefore, we urgently need YOUR participation! I’m going to describe what we’ve envisioned so far, and then ask you to take a survey to give us your reactions. It’s really important that you take the time to complete the survey, because we’re also using it to gauge the size of our market, and the number of responses we receive will determine the capacity of the event itself.
We got the message loud and clear that you want the very best speakers and you want a lot of them. But the even stronger message we received from our Toronto attendees was that they valued networking with other attendees just as much as the formal presentations. Accordingly our next event will be designed with a networking reception the evening before the event begins, and we’re currently brainstorming other ideas for creating more networking opportunity between attendees. We’ll ask you to share your own ideas with us in the survey.
We’re aiming for a bigger event this time, to bring you more speakers and more content. At least two days, probably three. We very much want your feedback on the ideal length and your feelings about the balance between content and cost. We’re tentatively planning late January or early February 2019. We think Las Vegas is probably the best location, but we’re also considering hotels in Phoenix and Dallas. We invite your reactions to these choices in the survey.
We’re particularly excited to introduce a new VIP Pass concept. Think of it like coach and first class on an airline flight. The coach ticket gets you into the conference to attend all the great presentations, and it will probably include two catered lunches at the event hotel. In other words, everything you would expect from a normal professional conference. We’re working hard to keep the cost as low as possible so as many people as possible can attend. The First Class ticket is designed to give you much more personal face time with the speakers and the other VIPs. Many of your meals (breakfast, lunch and Dinner) will be catered, and you and a small number of other VIPs will be seated with one of the speakers for each meal so that you have the opportunity to engage your favorite speakers directly in conversation during the event. We’re not sure yet whether that would be all of your meals or just some of them, and we need your feedback to understand your desires.
When you register for the VIP Pass, we’ll ask you to rank all our speakers in the order you most want to meet them. Then we’ll do our best to plan your event so that you get to share a meal with several of your top picks. In addition to meals with the speakers, there will be at least one and possibly two VIP Receptions. This will be the same concept as our “Meet & Greet” for all attendees, except that you’ll be competing with a much smaller number of other attendees for face time with the speakers. We’re working hard to think of other ways to make the VIP Pass really special, and the survey will solicit your suggestions for what would else we could do to make the VIP Pass even better.
In terms of the overall event design, we’ve received feedback that many of you would like multi-speaker panels, such as an update on the U.S. Dollar End Game Series with Luke Gromen, Jeff Snider, and Mark Yusko. We’ve also received some requests for “breakout sessions” and moderated discussion groups that allow attendees voices to be heard as well as our featured speakers. The survey is designed to allow you to tell us exactly what’s most important to you, so that we can design the event to give you exactly what you want.
The details are anything but finalized. For now I want you to imagine that we have at least 10 and probably more featured speakers, who include our most popular MacroVoices interview personalities. Please imagine an event that is 2.5 days long for general attendees, plus an extra half day of special content for VIP Pass attendees. In addition, there is also a networking reception for all speakers and attendees at the event hotel the evening before the first full day of the conference. The venue is a convention-friendly hotel (probably in Las Vegas) and we will have negotiated discounted room rates for you with the hotel.
Based on these parameters, we are currently aiming for a regular attendee price in the $500 - $700 range (compare to $2,500+ for other 3-day conferences with similar content quality). That price would include two catered lunches at the event hotel. We are guessing the VIP Pass would cost between $2,000 and $3,000. Part of the reason that range is so wide is that we’ve not yet chosen the event hotel, and the VIP Ticket could potentially include as many as 7 to 10 catered meals, so needless to say the cost of those meals will play a big role in determining the ticket price.
Nothing is set in stone. If the format I’ve described above doesn’t appeal to you, we definitely want you to tell us exactly what you don’t like about it in the survey!
Please take our survey to tell us your reactions. And if you are at all interested in attending, please understand that it’s really important that you take the survey! We’re going to negotiate with the hotel for event space to accommodate the number of people who complete the survey indicating they are likely to attend. If you plan to attend but don’t bother to take the survey, there’s a good chance we’ll sell out again and be unable to accommodate you.
You can take our survey by clicking https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8NFTSKJ.
Erik Towsnend
MacroVoices Host
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Welcome to MacroVoices. By registering on our website you will gain access to additional content not available to the general public. Check out out Research Library where all of the content provided in our weekly Research Roundup email is always available for browsing and reading. You can also access past issues of the weekly Research Roundup email in case you have misplaced or accidentally deleted a past issue.
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All the Best,
Erik Townsend
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The investment world is full of scam artists and con men, and one of their favorite tricks is to join an investment-related discussion forum like this one under a false identity, then make a few intelligent-sounding posts in order to gain a reputation as “one of the smart guys”. Then comes the scam – usually a “Pump & Dump” scheme involving penny stocks.
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To the scam artists and con men: We strongly encourage you to just give up now and take your scams elsewhere. We know all your tactics, and we intend to monitor our forum carefully for abuse. You’re wasting your time here. We’re going to find you out, delete your posts, and ban you. You’re really much better off perpetrating your scams on another website that isn’t as closely moderated as this one.
Erik Townsend is a retired software entrepreneur turned hedge fund manager. Throughout his career, Erik has capitalized on his ability to understand complex systems and anticipate paradigm shifts far in advance of the mainstream. A teenage computer protégé, he spent most of his high school years at MIT's Artificial Intelligence laboratory, where he taught himself several computer programming languages. Erik became an independent software development and design consultant to Digital Corporation's manufacturing systems technology group at age 17. By age 20 he owned his first private aircraft, after earning his private and commercial pilot's licenses.
From his experience at MIT, Erik recognized that the IT industry's failure to embrace distributed computing translated to an exceptional entrepreneurial opportunity. At age 21, Erik committed himself to developing and commercializing distributed application software technologies he was first exposed to at MIT in the late '70s. By the mid-1980s, Erik had invented an approach to distributed system design that is now widely known as Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). After applying SOA concepts initially at Digital Equipment Corp (where he consulted for nearly 10 years), in 1992 Erik founded the Cushing Group, a boutique consultancy focused exclusively on bringing advanced distributed application computing technologies to market. The Cushing Group's work with Wells Fargo Bank in the early 1990s paved the way for Wells Fargo to become the world's first Internet Bank by early 1995.
By 1998, Erik had grown The Cushing Group to 35 employees, $10mm annual revenues, and an exceptional 28% net operating income. The Cushing Group was well on its way to becoming the premier authority on SOA, and many expected the company to go public after a few more years. But Erik recognized that valuations for IT Service companies were ridiculously high at the time, and that an exit through acquisition was more prudent than waiting for an IPO in a market where Erik was convinced a bubble was forming.
After selling the Cushing Group to Ciber, Inc. (NYSE: CBR) in 1998, Erik briefly engaged a well-known investment bank to manage his assets, but was profoundly disappointed with their services. He subsequently took a deep dive into macroeconomic/fundamental investing and educated himself on the mechanics of derivatives trading. Erik has actively traded energy, grains, and precious metals futures markets since 2008, and has become a recognized expert in Peak Oil investing, having given lectures on that topic to Parliament in Belgium and at the ASPO technical conference. Erik has also become a financial podcast personality, having appeared regularly as the commodities commentator on a popular weekly financial program for several years.
Erik has become a passionate world traveler. He moved to Hong Kong in 2009 to get a better perspective on changing global economics. While living in Hong Kong, several hedge fund professionals he met there observed that through his own passionate trading activities, Erik was “already doing all the work of running a hedge fund except for picking up the phone and calling a lawyer and turning it into a fund”. Erik was flattered by the advice of his peers in Hong Kong to launch his own hedge fund, but wanted to finish his boots-on-ground evaluation of the global economy first. He spent just over sixteen months in 2011 and 2012 exploring the world, living in 28 cities in 18 countries during that period. Erik continues to live a very international lifestyle, and presently has homes in Hong Kong, Mexico and the United States.
Erik eventually took his Hong Kong friends’ advice to heart, and founded Fourth Turning Capital Management, LLC in 2013. Through that asset management company, he launched a Global Macro-strategy hedge fund in July 2013. In February 2016, Erik launched Macro Voices, a new weekly financial podcast program which will target professional finance, high net worth, and other “sophisticated” investors who desire financial content at a level of sophistication and complexity above what the retail investment-focused podcasts on the Internet presently offer.
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The Short Answer
An accredited investor is a natural person who EITHER has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person's spouse, that exceeds $1 million, excluding the value of the primary residence of such person; OR a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year. Finance professionals who are employed by banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions are usually considered accredited investors as well.
The Long Answer
This material is copied from Wikipedia.
Accredited investor is a term defined by various countries' securities laws that delineates investors permitted to invest in certain types of higher risk investments including seed money, limited partnerships, hedge funds, private placements, and angel investor networks. The term generally includes wealthy individuals and organizations such as banks, insurance companies, significant charities, some corporations, endowments, and retirement plans.
In the United States, for an individual to be considered an accredited investor, they must have a net worth of at least one million US dollars, not including the value of their primary residence or have income at least $200,000 each year for the last two years (or $300,000 together with their spouse if married) and have the expectation to make the same amount this year."
In Canada, the same prerequisites apply, however their net worth must be a minimum of one million dollars not including the value of their principal residence.
U.S. criteria
"The federal securities laws define the term accredited investor in Rule 501 of Regulation D and as amended by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as:
- a bank, insurance company, registered investment company, business development company, or small business investment company;
- an employee benefit plan, within the meaning of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, if a bank, insurance company, or registered investment adviser makes the investment decisions, or if the plan has total assets in excess of $5 million;
- a charitable organization, corporation, or partnership with assets exceeding $5 million;
- a director, executive officer, or general partner of the company selling the securities;
- a business in which all the equity owners are accredited investors;
- a natural person who has individual net worth, or joint net worth with the person's spouse, that exceeds $1 million at the time of the purchase, or has assets under management of $1 million or above, excluding the value of their primary residence;[2][3]
- a natural person with income exceeding $200,000 in each of the two most recent years or joint income with a spouse exceeding $300,000 for those years and a reasonable expectation of the same income level in the current year;[4] or
- a trust with assets in excess of $5 million, not formed to acquire the securities offered, whose purchases a sophisticated person makes."
