The Big Picture Conference 2011

Speakers

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  James Altucher James Altucher has built and sold 3 businesses. And maybe failed at 16 others. He’s traded successfully for several hedge funds and ran a fund of hedge funds which he was fortunate enough to unwind right before the housing collapse. He makes angel investments with a group of other investors through Formula Capital. He’s written seven books, has written for the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal. He blogs at jamesaltucher.com where he confesses most of his sins and hopes that people forgive him.
  
  His latest book, I Was Blind But Now I See was an Amazon bestseller, beating out Joel Osteen’s latest book, for fifteen seconds. But everyone in this audience gets it for free. He receives, on average, one death threat a week. He doesn’t have a driver’s license but in his pocket right now are the keys to his car. He has written about why nobody should ever buy a home but he owns a home. He has written why nobody should ever go to college but he went to college. He’s bullish on the stock market but advises people to never own stocks. He thinks Shakespeare is in the bottom 10% of all writers and should not be studied in school.
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  Sal Arnuk Sal Arnuk is partner, co-founder and co-head of equity trading of Themis Trading LLC, a leading independent agency brokerage firm that trades equities for institutional money managers and hedge funds. Arnuk has extensive experience in equities trading and is an expert in electronic trading and market structure. Prior to founding Themis in 2002, he was with Instinet Corporation, where he headed the team responsible for equity sales and trading for institutional money managers, for more than 10 years.
  
  His opinions are sought by leaders, regulators, market participants, and the media, and are presented via white papers and Themis’ widely-read blog. He is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, such as Trader Forum, Waters, National Organization of Investment Professionals (NOIP) and Fusion IQ's Big Picture, on issues involving market access, algorithmic trading and other sell- and buy-side concerns.
  
  He also provides expert commentary for media outlets such as the Associated Press, BBC Radio, Bloomberg TV & Radio, BNN, CNBC, Fox Business, NPR, Barron’s, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg News, Pensions & Investments and Advanced Trading. He is also co-author of the book, Broken Markets.
  
  Arnuk earned an MBA in Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a Bachelor’s Degree in Finance from SUNY Binghamton University.
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  James Bianco James Bianco is President of Bianco Research, L.L.C., an Arbor Research & Trading, LLC affiliate. Since November 1990, he has been producing fixed income commentaries with a circulation of hundreds of portfolio managers and traders. Jim's commentaries are primarily devoted to the fixed income markets with special emphasis on: money flow characteristics of primary dealers, mutual funds, hedge funds, futures traders, banks, and institutional investors. Other topics he has researched include: the effects of commodity prices on bond yields, how the ratio of the equity market's capitalization as a percentage of nominal gross domestic product affects price performance of the stock market, the role government regulation plays in determining inflation, how market performance affects mutual fund investors, the role politics plays in setting interest rates, and measuring the stock and bond markets from a total-return perspective.
  
  Jim produces unique and original insights into movements in the financial markets and has been a featured speaker at many investment conferences. He is regularly featured in the following investment publications: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barrons, US News And World Report, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune, The National Review, Euromoney, and Grant's Interest Rate Observer in addition to the Dow Jones, Reuters, Knight-Ridder and Associated Press newswires. He has also written for Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities, Financial Trader and Futures Magazine and has appeared numerous times on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg and Fox News.
  
  Prior to joining Arbor and Bianco Research, Jim spent five years in New York City with several prominent investment banking firms. He was a Market Strategist in equity and fixed income research at UBS Securities and Equity Technical Analyst at First Boston and Shearson Lehman Brothers. He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) and a member of the Market Technicians Association (MTA), where he served as a national Vice-President and Chairman of the MTA's 1996 annual seminar.
  
  Mr. Bianco is married with four children and resides in Chicago. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Marquette University (1984) and an MBA from Fordham University (1989).
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  Henry Blodget Henry Blodget is the CEO and Editor of The Business Insider, an online business media company based in New York. Blodget is also a host of Yahoo's TechTicker, an online finance show watched by more than 1 million people a month, and a contributor to Bloomberg TV.
  
  He frequently contributes to MSNBC, NPR, The Atlantic, The New York Times, the Financial Times, and other organizations.
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  Peter Boockvar Peter Boockvar is currently the Equity Strategist at Miller Tabak + Co., LLC., in addition to his role as a salestrader on the equity desk. He is a CNBC contributor and is frequently quoted on Reuters, Dow Jones Newswires, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and The Associated Press. He joined Miller Tabak + Co., LLC in 1994 after working in the corporate bond research department at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. He is on the Board of Directors of Ameritrans Capital Corporation, a publicly traded Business Development Company. He is also president of OCLI, LLC and OCLI2, LLC, farmland real estate investment funds. Mr. Boockvar graduated Magna Cum Laude with a B.B.A. in Finance from George Washington University.
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  Paul Brodsky Paul Brodsky is the co-managing member of QB Asset Management Company, a New York investment manager of private funds. Prior to co-founding QBAMCO in 2006, Mr. Brodsky was the CEO and Portfolio Manager of Spyglass Capital, which he founded in 1996. Mr. Brodsky began his career at Kidder Peabody and traded securities for firms including Drexel Burnham Lambert, as well as for his own firm at the American Stock Exchange. Mr. Brodsky graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982.
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  Josh Brown Joshua Brown is a New York City-based financial advisor at Fusion Analytics. Brown helps people invest and manage portfolios. Brown's clients range from individuals to corporations to retirement plans to charitable foundations.
  
  Brown is also a regular contributor to: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNNMoney, Christian Science Monitor, The Business Insider and CNBC. Brown is also the creator of Things Apple is Worth More Than which began as a joke but then the The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly and TIME Magazine started talking about it.
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  Kelly Evans Kelly Evans is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She writes the Journal’s daily “Ahead of the Tape” column, which is part of the “Heard on the Street” team, and also anchors the weekday 8:30am “News Hub” broadcast on WSJ.com. Ms. Evans joined the WSJ in 2007 covering real estate and economics, and went on to spend two years as a reporter for the Global Economics bureau.
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  Dan Gross Daniel Gross joined Yahoo! Finance in the fall of 2010 as columnist, economics editor, and a co- host of The Daily Ticker. The best-selling author of six books, including Forbes Greatest Business Stories and Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation, Gross has been covering politics, business, and economics for two decades. The longtime “Moneybox” columnist for Slate, he was a staff writer and columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to the “Economic View” column in the New York Times.
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  Todd Harrison Todd Harrison is a Founder of Minyanville Publishing and Multimedia, LLC and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Harrison has sixteen years of experience on Wall Street. He spent seven years on the worldwide equity derivative desk at Morgan Stanley as Vice President. Since 1997, he served as a Managing Director of Derivatives at The Galleon Group. Three years later, he joined a $400 million hedge fund as Partner (Head of Trading) and served as its President from January 2001 to January 2003. From July 2000 to September 2001, Mr. Harrison was the Featured Columnist on TheStreet.com’s Realmoney.com financial website. Mr. Harrison holds graduate Degree from Syracuse University with honors in 1991.
  
  Along with Minyanville Media, Harrison received an Emmy Award from The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for his role as Executive Producer of the animated business news show Minyanville’s World in Review.
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  Doug Kass Douglas Kass is the founder and President of Seabreeze Partners Management, Inc., which is also the General Partner of Seabreeze Partners Long/Short, L.P. From January, 2005 to August, 2009 Kass managed a dedicated short fund, Seabreeze Partners Short L.P.
  
  From 2003-04 he served as the portfolio manager and principal of Demours Capital Management, LLC, which was the general partner and investment manager of Circle T Market Neutral Fund, L.P. and Circle T Market Neutral Offshore Fund, Ltd.
  
  From 2001-2005 he was General Partner of Seabreeze Partners L.P. and from 1997-2003 Kass was the General Partner of Kass Partners, LLC, the predecessor firm to Kass Partners, Ltd., which was founded in 1997.
  
  From 1995-96, he was senior portfolio manager at Omega Advisors, a $4 billion investment partnership. Before that he was executive senior vice president and director of institutional equities at JW Charles/CSG (1993-95) and First Albany (1991-93).
  
  Kass was the General Partner of DAK Securities, an investment management company, from 1985-90. During 1984 he was a General Partner of Jakobson Kass Partners LP.
  
  From 1978-83 he was a General Partner of Glickenhaus & Co (1978-83), and served as a vice president - analyst and economist - of Putnam Management (1974-78).
  
  Kass started his investment career as a housing analyst at Kidder, Peabody in 1972.
  
  Kass received his bachelor’s from Alfred University. In May 2010, he delivered the commencement speech to the graduating class of 2010. He received a Doctor of Humane Laws and is Vice Chairman of the University’s Investment Committee and a Member of the Board of Trustees. Kass received his MBA in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1972.
  
  He serves as a Member of the Board of Directors of Empire Resources Inc. - a Nasdaq listed company.
  
  He co-authored Citibank: The Ralph Nader Report with Ralph Nader and the Center for the Study of Responsive Law.
  
  Kass has lectured on short selling and on the stock market at Harvard Business School, Yale University’s Graduate School of Management, The Kellogg School (Northwestern University) and at Seton Hall University.
  
  Kass has been frequently interviewed in and has written numerous articles for Barrons including several cover stories and editorials. He has also been quoted in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post and in many other newspapers around the world.
  
  Kass, a CNBC contributor, is a frequent guest on the network’s The Kudlow Report, Street Signs, and Fast Money. He serves as a guest host on CNBC’s Squawk Box and has been seen on ABC’s Good Morning America and on NBC’s The Today Show.
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  Kevin Lane Named one of the top independent analysts in the country by Business Week Magazine in their expose entitled, “Analysts That Get It”, Mr. Lane serves as Chief Investment Officer for Fusion Analytics Investment Partners LLC and is head of the firm’s Investment Policy Committee. Mr. Lane is also the founder and lead architect behind Fusion’s proprietary software platform FusionIQ which fuses a variety of technical and fundamental variables/analytics into a cohesive alpha generating equity ranking system. Known throughout the investing world for his insightful and against the grain research calls, Mr. Lane forewarned investors of the pending collapses at both Enron and Tyco while the consensus Wall Street opinion still remained bullish. Additionally, his early and accurate predictions in 2002 and 2003/2004 of new secular Bull Markets in Gold (2002), Energy (2003), and Oil Service (2004) were both timely and again against consensus.
  
  A sought after analyst, Mr. Lane is routinely cited and appears in major media outlets such as Bloomberg Television, Fox Business Television, CNBC, Barron’s, The USA Today, and Business Week. Additionally, he has been hired as a research consultant to many of the nation’s top hedge funds and trading desks, such as UBS where he was hired to teach algorithmic/technical trading strategies. Also a respected lecturer, Mr. Lane gives numerous presentations to many of the country’s top business schools.
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  Howard Lindzon Howard Lindzon is co-founder and CEO of StockTwits – a social network for traders and investors to share real-time ideas and information. StockTwits was recently named “one of the top 10 most innovative companies in web” by FastCompany and one of the “50 best websites” by Time magazine.
  
  Mr. Lindzon has more than twenty years experience in the financial community acting in both an entrepreneurial and investing capacity. With a unique vision for starting and successfully managing innovative companies, he is the Managing Partner of Social Leverage, a holding company that invests in early stage web businesses. Howard continues to manage a hedge fund he started in 1998. He created Wallstrip, and more than 400 original web video shows, which was purchased by CBS Corp. in 2007. He is an active angel with many success angel investments including: Rent.com, (purchased by Ebay in 2005 for $415 million), Golfnow.com (purchased by Comcast in June 2008), and Lifelock (lead investors include Bessemer Venture Partners and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). Mr. Lindzon’s new media and internet business investments also include: Limos.com, Blogtalkradio.com, Buddy Media, Ticketfly, Assistly, Bit.ly and Tweetdeck (purchased by Twitter in June 2011).
  
  Mr. Lindzon received an MBA at Arizona State University and an MIM from The American Graduate School of International Management.
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  Catherine Mulbrandon Catherine Mulbrandon launched VisualizingEconomics.com in 2006, a website dedicated to publishing infographics about economic data. She received an AB in economics from The University of Chicago and a Masters in Design from Carnegie Mellon and has worked 10 years in the finance industry. A native of Washington, DC she currently lives and works in Jersey City, NJ where she is creating "An Illustrated Guide to Income in the United States."
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  Barry Ritholtz Mr. Ritholtz is CEO and Director of Equity Research at Fusion IQ, an online quantitative research firm.
  
  Mr. Ritholtz performed his graduate studies at Yeshiva University’s Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York, where he focused on Economics, Anti-Trust and Corporate Law. He was a member of the Law Review, and graduated Cum Laude with a 3.56 GPA. His undergraduate work was at Stony Brook University, where on a Regents Scholarship, he focused on Mathematics and Physics, graduating with an Bachelor Arts & Sciences degree in Political Science. He was a member of the Stony Brook Equestrian Team, and competed successfully in the National Championships (1981) of the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association. In addition to writing the National Affairs column for the campus weekly (The Stony Brook Press), he was elected Vice-President of the student body.
  
  Ritholtz wrote the book Bailout Nation, which was published by Wiley in Summer 2009.
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  John Roque John heads WJB’s Technical Analysis Strategy group. Prior to joining WJB, he spent eleven years leading the Technical Analysis team at Natixis Bleichroeder. John’s work has received wide recognition throughout the industry. John, along with his partner, Adolfo Rueda, Director, CMT, have been consistently II ranked from 2006-2010. They received the rankings of Runner- Up for Technical Analysis in 2006, Third Place in 2007, and Runner-Up in 2008 through 2010.
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  Joe Saluzzi Mr. Saluzzi co-heads the Themis trading desk. In addition to his extensive experience in equities trading, Mr. Saluzzi is an expert in electronic trading. Prior to Themis, Mr. Saluzzi worked for more than nine years at Instinet Corporation, where he headed the team responsible for equity sales and trading for major hedge fund accounts.
  
  Mr. Saluzzi graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an MBA in Finance. Mr. Saluzzi received a Bachelor's Degree in Finance from New York University.
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  Aaron Task Aaron Task is the host of “The Daily Ticker” (nee “Tech Ticker”) and an award-winning journalist. Prior to joining Yahoo! in 2008, he was editor-at-large of The Street.com, were he spent 10 years in a variety of roles, including San Francisco bureau chief.
  
  With Barry Ritholtz, Aaron co-authored “Bailout Nation,” and is a sought-after commentator on financial markets, economics and related public policy. Aaron is a regular guest on Fox Business, MSNBC, “The John Bachelor Show” and other media outlets.
  
  He holds bachelor’s degrees in history and journalism from Rutgers College, and he has been a guest lecturer at Rutgers, NYU, Santa Clara University and Dartmouth’s Tuck School.
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  Joe Weisenthal Prior to joining Business Insider in October 2008, Joe was a correspondent for paidContent.org, as well as the Opening Bell editor at Dealbreaker.com. He previously was a writer and analyst for Techdirt.com, and before that he worked as an analyst for money management firm Prentiss Smith & Co.
  
  He got started writing with his own infrequently updated blog TheStalwart.com. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Joe’s interests include Chinese food, chess and poker. Weisenthal covers markets, finance, and the economy, while also helping to manage the site overall.