If you’re just joining us, we’re at the Renaissance Vinoy in St. Petersburg, Florida. We’re enjoying the sunny weather, the hospitality, and a small fleet of high performance cigar racing boats in the bay. Their crews have been all over the place in the last day or so.

And if you’ve been “tuning in” for the last few days, you know that I’ve been all over the place in the last few days as well. I’m your “eyes and ears” during our 11^th Annual meeting.

And today is no different. It’s why I’m listening to Louis Basenese break down our current situation, and what we can do about it…

Taking a Look Back on the Crash

In one of the best explanations I’ve heard so far, Louis Basenese broke down the crash of 2008, and why it broke so many “rules.” It’s important to understand because traditional “safe havens” surprised so many investors by not performing as expected, shaking confidence.

There were other things in play as well. Regulations like the ‘uptick rule’ changed. And it was made worse by the collapse of some key Wall Street institutions that ran segments of the credit market. Mortgage assets, which numerous institutions had on their books, took a nosedive as reckless risk evaluation collided with collapsing home values.

It was a confluence of events few could have predicted.

Louis, or ‘Lou’ as friends know him, made sense of these events before his talk turned to some of the companies that are on his radar.

On of them is Stonemor Partners L P (Nasdaq: STON). This company makes caskets and owns cemeteries. Stonemor also sells burial plots to people and has entered the pet cemetery market where the margins are much more significant.

And while this “recession-proof” business has cash and a steady demand – it’s trading at just over $10 a share – Lou cautioned against buying right now. Their quarterly report comes out on March 31. Wait and see how the financials look and if they maintain their dividend payment.

Market Threats And Offshore Opportunities

Thomas Fischer, Sr. Vice President of Jyske Global Asset Management is from Denmark – you know the country with the most wicked, killer, pastries on the planet. He started in foreign exchange as a trader for 22 years. He presented some valuable advice for “newbies” on Forex, cautioning that while currency trading is fun – you have to be careful on a trading platform that gives you 100:1 leverage (standard contract) or more.

He’s seen time and time again that people trading with $5,000 will make 2 or 3 trades that are good. Then they get overconfident and lose it all.

Thomas recommends starting in the EUR:USD, saying that 35% of all trades are in this currency.  This makes it the most liquid. He’s bearish on the Euro, because he believes the next thing to blow up is eastern Europe.

Like Alex Green he’s bullish on the stock market for the long term. He explains that cash holdings are at 1990 highs here in the US …that’s $8.85 trillion, earning less than 1%! That’s a ton of money waiting to flood into the market.

Thomas recommended some intriguing opportunities including a EUR bond BBB yielding 15%. Get the full details on his currency trading recommendations, as well as his European perspective on transferring your trading accounts offshore, here.

Thomas Fisher put it this way, ”The currency market doesn’t correlate with stock or bond markets. You can always find a currency that you can own outright that will outperform another currency. If you pick your currencies wisely.”

And as our friends from Everbank pointed out, for the beginning investor, there is plenty of good, easily accessible research out there on the fundamentals that can give us an idea of the potential direction and current yields for currencies. For example, here.

Another Great Suggestion

We’ve heard from dozens of experts and specialists over the past few days. In addition to their personal viewpoints and opinions on how to prosper in good times and bad, we’ve also been getting some great tips on asset protection.

One, from Byron King at Outstanding Investments, was about storing your assets in bank lock-boxes…

If you own gold, make sure you get an account co-signer at the bank for any lock-box. If you die and don’t have a co-signer, the bank will not open it without a revenue service representative present. It’s an easy way to keep the IRS from hassling your grieving family members.

If your interesting in getting the full conference audio files, and all of the little tips that we’ve heard, go here.

Natural Resource Prospecting

Rick Rule is always a popular speaker at our conferences, and I’m happy to say he doesn’t disappoint. In this session he talked about the risks and rewards involved with resource exploration.

I was surprised to learn that only 1 of 5,000 prospects becomes a mine. This is why exploration can be so costly. However, the upside potential can be huge. Returns on successful efforts are often as high as $1,000 in profit for every $1.00 invested.

According to Rick, the only statistically rational way of to speculate in mineral exploration is to develop a portfolio of exploration stocks called “prospect generators“.

Rick explains is better on the recording, but prospect generators are corporate assemblages of very high quality explorations and entrepreneurs. They employ specialized technical or commercial skills to generate exploration concepts. Rick emphasizes, “It’s important to recognize that exploration is a knowledge business like research & development in technology.“

He added that the best due diligence is done by mining companies – not by investors or brokerage firms who often have a conflict of interest in their recommendations.

Rick also talked about three companies he’s personally invested in.

Rick Rule is an expert on natural resource investing, and one of the most knowledgeable “prospectors” I know. He won’t give you a stock suggestion if he wouldn’t personally put money in it. The audio files will have more on the three he likes.

Questions Answered

Throughout the conference I’m often approached with questions on a session or two. One question in particular stuck out today.

Oxford Club Chairman Circle Member Harry J. comes up to me as I’m pouring a cup of tea.  He remarks, “What do I do if I’ve already got a million dollar stock portfolio?“  I looked at him and replied…”Well, you celebrate!“

Turns out Harry used the principles and portfolios we recommend in the Oxford Club…he showed me the numbers to prove it. I think the best thing he can do is to educate others…pass on the wealth of knowledge, as they say. That’s what we’re trying to do with our new Investment U course, “How to Create Your $1,000,000 Portfolio From Scratch.”

It teaches you, your kids, and your grandkids the nuts and bolts of the investment approach we use at the Oxford Club. It will allow you to do exactly what Harry did.

We’ll have more on that soon. In the meantime, I’m rushing back into another session now. Stay tuned for our closing day’s wrap-ups and panel discussions on Monday.

Source: “Looking Back, So We Can Move Forward”

“[In 2007], there were 1,125 billionaires. This year, it’s down to 793,” says CEO Steve Forbes.

An NPR broadcast tried to put an optimistic spin on the news suggesting, “All those empty spots… mean more room for the rest of us to move up.” In good fun, it even provided five secrets to do so, based upon the business activities that propelled 38 new billionaires into this year’s rankings.

But in all fairness, I don’t think a single one of us stands a chance of becoming a billionaire in the next year. So let’s put the Forbes list to better use than invoking a fanciful daydream about joining the lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Turns out, by focusing on the 10 biggest losers – who lost a combined $238 billion – the list contains four timeless investing lessons we can put to work immediately to prevent a similar disaster (in relative terms, of course).

Lesson #1: Have an Exit Strategy

While some can argue averaging down – buying more shares as prices fall to reduce your average cost per share – is a smart move, it’s stupid if you don’t ever stop. Just ask Carlos Slim Helu. To his detriment, he couldn’t resist buying more of luxury retailer Saks or The New York Times as shares plummeted.

Instead of endlessly throwing good money after bad, cut your losses and move on. It’s hard to do, that’s why we recommend using trailing stops. They take all the emotion out of the decision and provide much needed discipline to exit an investment gone bad… before it gets really bad.

Lesson #2: Don’t Try to Time the Market or Make a Few Big Bets

We know it’s tempting. But even Warren Buffett can’t do it. He admittedly “did some dumb things.” Atop the list is certainly his decision to plunk down $244 million on ConocoPhillips at the top of the oil market. Trying to make a fortune by placing a few big, well-timed bets is a surefire way to lose a fortune, not make one.

Lesson #3: Use Leverage Sparingly… Or Not at All

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska needed a $4.5 billion loan from a state-controlled bank to avoid a margin call by Western Banks on his 25% stake in Norilsk Nickel. Other margin calls forced him to raise $2 billion by selling his stakes in Magna International and Hochtief. Leverage might magnify returns on the upside, but don’t forget it does the same thing to losses on the downside. And we’re not as fortunate to have a state-controlled bank to bail us out.

Lesson #4: Asset Allocate

This is akin to our parents telling us to “eat your vegetables.” We know it’s good for us. But that doesn’t mean we necessarily do it. Consider this your annual reminder because without exception, the 10 biggest losers on the Forbes list had almost all their assets in one basket.

Take Anil Ambani for example. His sizeable investment in India’s Reliance companies (Communications, Power and Capital) made him last year’s biggest gainer and this year’s biggest loser, down $32 billion.

Granted, most billionaires can’t simply unwind their biggest investments. In many cases they’re in the business they created and they need to retain a large stake to stay in control.

But we can. So if too much of your portfolio is invested in a single investment, it’s time for a change.

If we don’t invest too much (position size) in any one opportunity and spread our investments around widely (asset allocate), it’s impossible to be wiped out in one fell swoop.

Yes, protection is that simple. And while it might not be that easy for the world’s billionaires, it is for us. So use it.

Forbes’ 10 Biggest Losers: 4 Wealth Protection Lessons From Bankrupt Billionaires

Let me see if I get this right. A week ago, Lehman was running around reassuring everyone it had enough cash to stay in business. Not exactly high cotton. Investors are worried about a bank run, and insiders think it might be too small to qualify for a Fed bailout should it fail.

On top of this, claims that nasty short-sellers are spreading false rumors are making rounds—the company denies the rumors, but they persist, and the company has not showed anything strong enough to stop them cold.

This sale of preferred stock was supposed to raise capital to put the rumors to rest and show how strong the company is. But why does it need this new massive new capital transfusion this very moment, and at such high cost, if it really doesn’t have a money shortage, as it claims?

The company has cut employees by almost 20% already—which hardly signals growth going the right way, does it? It got into trouble with debt, too. It just wrote down $1.8 billion in bad mortgage assets in its recent quarter. If it does that again, everything it raised in the convertible sale will be eaten up by the write-offs.

The preferreds carry a 7.25% yield, which will cost the company an extra $290 million a year to pay. When converted to regular shares, they stand to dilute earnings per share by about 15%. All I can think is that analysts who stand too close to Lehman’s shadow on Wall Street need to step back for a bit of light.