Notes From Invest For Kids Chicago Conference 2017: Balyasny, Zell, Litowitz & More

The 9th annual Invest For Kids Chicago conference recently concluded and featured top investors sharing investment picks to benefit charitable organizations.

Last year's conference picks returned 22.9% in an equal-weighted portfolio over the past year.  Here are this year's picks: click each link to go to that speaker's presentation.


Invest For Kids Chicago Notes 2017

- Dmitry Balyasny (Balyasny Asset Management): long Hertz (HTZ)

- Sam Zell (Equity Group Investments): On retail real estate 

- Alec Litowitz (Magnetar): Presentation

- Amos Meron, (Empyrean Capital): long Seritage (SRG)

- Rajiv Jain (GQG Partners): long Sberbank (SBER.RU)

- Rick Reider (Blackrock): long emerging markets debt

- Jimmy Levin (Oz Management): Long Chinese banks

- Mathew Klody (MCN Capital): short Domino's (DPZ)

- Seth Singerman (Singerman Real Estate): long Washington Prime Group (WPG)

- Bart Stephens, Blockchain Capital: bullish bitcoin, ethereum, blockchain

Bart Stephens Bullish on Bitcoin, Blockchain: Invest For Kids Chicago Presentation

We're posting up notes from the Invest For Kids Chicago Conference 2017.  Next up is Bart Stephens of Blockchain Capital who is bullish on bitcoin, ethereum, and all things blockchain.


Bart Stephens' Invest For Kids Chicago Presentation: Bitcoin, Blockchain

$150 billion of value created in digital assets this year alone.  Silicon Valley and Wall Street have been totally absent so far in this rally.

Is bitcoin a bubble? Look at historical bubbles – they all involve levered financial speculators. Not here.

Bitcoin is driven by young people. Establishment hates it. Scale also matters in bubbles, and bitcoin is still very small.

Bitcoin is “gold 2.0”.  Blockchain technology is the world’s largest, most decentralized database – 1,000x larger than the sum of all of Google’s servers.  Blockchain has never had a hack of its protocol.  ICOs -- $2.5 billion raised YTD October; more ICOs this year than Nasdaq IPOs; some ICOs are good, some are bad.

Regulation – not illegal; taxable by the IRS; was a criminal conduit at first but gaining legitimacy; regulators have given us the rules of the road.


For more from this event, check out the rest of the presentations from Invest For Kids Chicago 2017.