Weekly Blog #6

Due Date: October 6th, 2014

By: Matthew W. Blair

         This week was a busy one. Our assignments included: Business Symposium Thank You notes, scheduling two interviews by Friday, conducting interviews, and our usual research. I have made one of two thank you notes for my interviewers at symposium, and will have those 100% complete by next week.

         To start off the week I decided to call a couple Hedge Funds in Dallas and attempt to schedule interviews; that first day did not go so well. Not a single fund was able to schedule with me for various reasons. Some because they did not have time, others were traveling, and some just said no. As off-putting as that was I continued, and with the help of some of my resources I got two interviews scheduled before Friday. One was a phone interview on Thursday with Mr. Matt Higbie at Carlson Capital LP, and the other is scheduled for October 22^nd with Mr. Jon Gattman of Cloverdale Capital. After my interview on Thursday I was full of excitement, I spoke with Mr. Higbie from Carlson Capital LP. He deals with investing in banking companies at Carlson and was able to teach me some very interesting strategies of investing that Carlson uses. It was so exciting to get to talk to someone about investing and not have to clarify what a certain word meant. The biggest compliment I received from him was how ahead I am; with my reading and knowledge of the field he said that at my age he was not doing what I am. I took as a compliment and will follow the other advice he gave me. I hope to remain in contact with him and possibly schedule another interview with him, but at Carlson in Dallas.

         This week was, yet again, a horrible week for the market. Brent Oil dropped below $90 a barrel, the Dow fell below its recent 17K achievement steadily this week, the S&P and Nasdaq both had less than desired performances’ this week, upon Tesla’s release of its newest model the stock fell and ended the week over 7 points down, and to top it off the Russell 1000 showed a slight rally Wednesday but still ended the week down. Overall just another horrible week for the market to add on to the previous two bad weeks.

         Per my teacher’s inquiry and my own I have began researching all the previous market crashes and watching the market for telltale signs. I began reading “Too Big To Fail” by Anderson Ross Sorkin, which covers in depth the 2008 subprime mortgage boom and crash. On the side I have created bear market friendly portfolios that should prove resistant to a crash. The assets in the portfolio are mainly ETFs and Bonds that have shown either a rise in price or stagnation throughout this bull market and the 2008 crash.