Portfolio manager Cale Smith’s riffs on investing, spoke funds, and Islamorada in the Florida Keys.

A video from future spoke fund manager Dustin, who says:

I’m always looking for things I can add to the ‘mental file cabinet’. Thought you might find this one interesting. This helps explain why Spoke Funds and aligning your interests with investors works.

“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

My favorite was this quote:

“The goal is not to do business with anybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.”

Enjoy.

Here’s the first group of slides from the spoke fund workshop I held here in Islamorada a few weekends ago. I’ll split the original presentation up over several posts to keep things in bite-sized chunks.

I think I speak for everyone in reporting that it was an enjoyable day. Steve, Kevin, Chris, Kai and Dustin came in from all over – DC, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Chicago and Gainesville – to basically sit all day in the old dynamite warehouse that is my office and learn more about spoke funds. Everyone there was a value investor, and I don’t think I was the only one that noticed we all seemed to share a certain ethic about the right way to treat our investors. I’ve found it’s pretty rare in this wacky industry o’ mine to find yourself in a room full of peers that you intrinsically trust, but this was one of those times. I began the day feeling flattered that they would show up, and ended feeling honored that they had.

I also found it a little bit surreal to hear other portfolio managers throwing around the “spoke fund” term like it was part of the vernacular. Kinda cool. Guess our little idea is growing up.

Unfortunately, the slides below don’t capture any of the many discussions, questions, comments or off-slide conversations we had. If you have any of your own as you view these, let ‘em fly in the comments section.

Since the workshop, I’ve also been doing some more digging on some of the topics I discussed that day – like finding out more about some new technology providers – and I’ll post those notes at some point, too.

So, here’s part one. If you’re already familiar with spoke funds and my firm, some of the early slides may look familiar, but hopefully there are more nuggets for you in the later ones.

And more slides will be posted soon.

Spoke funds don’t cause 1,000 point drops in the Dow.

Kansas Mutual Fund is Linked to Market’s Plunge.

Ah, mutual funds. If only you used your powers for good instead of evil…

And the first annual Spoke Fund workshop begins here in Islamorada in less than 12 hours. Notes to be posted soon!