The month of September marked the five year anniversary of a seminal event in the modern history of financial markets: the failure of Lehman Brothers, the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States. While a lot has changed, much stays the same: uncertainty still exists in the financial […]

We recently concluded our Spring conference circuit by attending, as we do every year, the Consumer Analyst Group of New York (CAGNY) annual conference in Boca Raton, Florida, and the Consumer Analyst Group of Europe (CAGE) annual conference in London. These conferences yielded new investment ideas that are already adding to portfolio returns. We were pleased with the general outlook conveyed by the CEO’s and CFO’s who presented at the conferences and always appreciate the opportunity to evaluate them and their company’s priorities “in the flesh.” Since we have written extensively on the consumer product conferences in previous years, we are focusing our latest Greenwood Report on a discussion of a different sector: Energy. On May 15-16 we attended the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) Industry Conference entitled Energy: Will the Oil and Gas Boom Reignite the Economy? The conference provided a great opportunity to summarize new developments in an industry we have followed closely for years. Many of the profits reaped by our client’s energy portfolio holdings have been a direct result of our research on this sector and we are pleased to provide this update on the current industry trends that continue to shape and help grow the economic recovery.