Road trip to Austin

Austin Trip 7/23/19 Reflection by Madison Flores
           
​On Tuesday, Brien and the current Aggie student interns at Traditions Wealth Advisors road tripped from College Station to Austin for the day. We were able to meet with Liberty Park Capital Management and Dimensional Fund Advisors in Austin to get more information on what their companies are all about. We met with Chuck Murphy of Liberty Park Capital Management who was an intern for Traditions Wealth Advisors back in 2004. Chuck graduated from Texas A&M and went straight to Wall Street. After several years of researching, Chuck was named the #1 small cap researcher on Wall Street and was written up in the Wall Street Journal. He then parlayed that honor into his own firm back in Austin. Chuck gave us insights on small-cap funds and what he focuses on to give his clients the best possible returns. Their expertise in the field helped us gain knowledge on what to look for when adjusting stock recommendations and why. He was also able to give a broader definition of what a hedge fund can look like which will help when looking at news that could be giving off construed financial information. He helped us learn how to separate the noise from what information is important for investments.

We also visited Dimensional Fund Advisors. They let us investigate their business model and how they manage their systematic investment approach. By listening to their firms take on economic indicators, it helped broaden the scope of what to pay attention to in the news as well as what economic trends have been historically important.

Both firms brought two different ideas together and gave us insights on what to focus more of our research on to make sure the necessary information is being taken into our clients' portfolios.  

Pictured above from left to right: Meredith Storey (current TWA intern), Madison Flores (current TWA intern), Charles Murphy (former TWA intern from 2004; current portfolio manager at Liberty Park Capital Management) and Spencer Fredericks (current TWA intern)