Speaking Engagements

VIRTUAL EVENTS

Fee:

$8,500 for presentations of up to an hour. No recording permitted.

IN PERSON

Fee:

$10,000 for a one-hour keynote presentation. No recording permitted.

Expenses:

First class airfare, standard hotel accommodation as needed, private car ground transportation to and from airports. (I travel from eastern Long Island, about 90 miles from the NYC airports.)

CONTACT

To contact Nick directly with inquiries, please click HERE.

Video: Hear more from Nick about the 2024 Keynote topic.

2024 KEYNOTE TOPIC:

OPTIMISM IS THE ONLY REALISM

Whenever the force of equity-driven innovation has collided with fearful current events, equities have always won out in the long run.

A middle school child’s latest generation iPhone commands more computing power than did all the IBM mainframe computers in operation on the planet in 1970. That device can access all the publicly available information in the world on any and every topic, at virtually no cost. Should the information be in a different language, the device will translate it. Such an instrument wasn’t merely unforeseen in 1970; it was unimaginable.

Yet investors in 1970 could hardly be blamed for being frightened out of the equity market by the dreadful events of that year. First was the panic trough of an 18-month, 36% decline in the S&P 500 — the deepest decline since the 1930s. Campuses erupted in a firestorm of rage when U.S. forces entered Cambodia; at Kent State in Ohio, National Guardsmen killed four student demonstrators, and investors’ hopes for peace were crushed.

Most ominously, it had become evident that inflation was destroying the ability of the United States to maintain the convertibility of dollars into gold at a fixed price — the very bedrock of the post-WWII international finance system. Investors quite reasonably feared this as the monetary equivalent of repealing the law of gravity; no one could predict what havoc it might wreak in the equity market.

Today, the paralyzing fears of the year 1970 seem like the ancient history they are. The S&P 500 is up about 50 times since that year ended, because that’s about how much earnings have grown. And nine of today’s 10 most valuable companies in the Index did not even exist in 1970. Along the way, the S&P 500’s cash dividend has increased three times more than consumer inflation.

The proclivity of investors to miss the long-term upward trend of mainstream equities’ values and dividends because of negative current events/trends is with us again today — indeed it always is. It’s human nature. For wealth managers, this contradiction may seem their greatest challenge. This talk suggests that it’s their greatest opportunity.

Left to its own devices, human nature will always tend to react to negative current-events narratives. An empathetic advisor can be the solution to breaking out of this this pattern, helping investors focus on the encouraging lessons of their entire lives rather than on today’s disturbing headlines.

Promoting a genuine long-term focus — and making it stick — can be a vital element in the wealth manager’s value proposition.