Investing Meetup Report (Part 5)

I’ll complete this review of the Meetup from three weeks ago by discussing a couple other attendees.

One attendee was a real estate investor who stated his reason for attending was to learn more for diversification purposes. The implication was clearly that he does well with real estate and has money to invest elsewhere. Also supporting my inference is the fact that he passed his business card out to everyone present. As we were leaving, he engaged me in conversation by asking if I or anyone I know might be interested in real estate. I said “not at this time.” He quickly dismissed me soon after saying his wife had texted telling him to come home for dinner.

Speaking of ulterior motives, this is something I have also commonly seen at Meetups: people in unrelated fields looking to market their wares. Was this guy really looking to learn about stock investing to put his real estate profits to work? Maybe. I think it’s also likely he was looking to advertise his real estate experience of buying and flipping houses to a group of people eager to make money. We’re attending a stock investing meetup because we want to make money, he figures. Why not try and make money through real estate and give him our cut instead?

The last person I want to discuss is another financial advisor in attendance. He was not with the company organizing the Meetup. With conflict of interest in mind (how could it not be?), I wonder why he chose to attend. He said he loves learning about investing and finance as a whole. I then asked the pointed question: what was he hoping to learn that he, being in the business himself, did not already know? I wonder if he was just checking out his competition (other advisors) or if he was looking to network and possibly find new clients himself? I’ll found out more as time goes by.

This Meetup was typical of others I have attended: arrogance, sales, marketing, ignorance, and a lack of useful connections. At least it was an excuse to get out for the night.

Free food, too… who can forget about that?!