Investment versus speculation
For years, Marilyn Ashby listened to her husband dissuade his clients from investing in popular stocks. “Everybody wanted their money in Nortel,” she remembers, “but Bill held firm and steered his clients in another direction. He felt Nortel was overvalued.” When the tech fall hit, his beliefs appeared to be confirmed. “That taught me to respect the market,” she says.
An alumna of Concordia University, she made a donation last year to the John Molson School of Business to establish a speaker series on value investing in William Ashby’s honour.
Value investing involves buying securities that the investor, after having conducted some manner of analysis, feels are underpriced. Early concepts associated with value investing are attributed to Benjamin Graham, who was a professor at the Columbia School of Business, where he taught Warren Buffet, and who is generally regarded to be the most successful investor of all time.
The first lecture in the series, entitled Investment Versus Speculation, examines past periods of irrational speculation and features William Ashby himself as the speaker.
“The South Sea Bubble, tulip mania and the dot-com crash all demonstrate that investors have a long history of ignoring obvious signs of excessive valuation and extreme market risk,” says Ashby. In his discussion of speculative cycles, Ashby looks at the signs that should have signalled the financial disasters that ensued, but went unheeded by investors. His lecture also looks at some of the elements that should have pointed to the extreme risk associated with the housing market and that, ultimately, led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
Ashby is a graduate of Sir George Williams University and spent most of his career working in securities research and portfolio management, serving several years as President of Beutel, Goodman and Company Ltd, the Toronto-based investment management firm.
When: Thursday, March 8 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Where: Room MB-15.254, John Molson School of Business Building (1450 Guy St.), Sir George Williams Campus
This event is free of charge, but space is limited. Registration is required.
The second lecture in the series, The Three Ws – Who, What, Why?, will be presented by George Athanassakos on Tuesday, April 3.
Related links:
• Registration
• John Molson School of Business