Reporting live from The Decade of Reckoning symposium, Vancouver, Canada

Today I am reporting live from Vancouver, Canada where Dr Marc Faber heads the cast of investment stars at this year’s 10th anniversary Agora Financial ‘Decade of Reckoning’ conference, part of financial newsletter baron Bill Bonner’s global empire.

This is about as far away from Dubai as it is possible to get, 10-12,000 miles depending on where you draw the line. It will be very interesting to hear the speakers from the investment industry, many I have only read and never met.

Expert delegates

But perhaps as curious will be to talk to the participants. There are around 700 of them, many ultra high net worth individuals with some very strong views on investment themselves.

Of course, delegates are inclined to emphasize the positive after the most negative year for investors since 1929. The real insight comes when asking what are they doing with their money now, nobody likes to talk about their dead investments.

One man I bumped into at the opening reception said he was now more short than long in markets and still mainly in cash. Others are parked in precious metals as followers of Dr Marc Faber.

You can hardly blame people for being cautious and the general feeling is that to chase the stock market rally higher at this stage would be a mistake. But then it has to be said that this is a conference – perhaps the greatest annual event in the world – for alternative asset investments, so Wall Street spin doctors are not on offer.

Past experience

But sometimes it pays to travel. Three years ago I went to Detroit as a guest of DaimlerChrysler as it then was and General Motors. I could tell from that visit that US auto companies were in deep trouble and could only go down; and the television I watched in the middle of the night was full of programs about how to flip property, and that seemed a disaster waiting to happen.

So I wonder what this conference will deliver in terms of new ideas, and as I sit at 3.30am on my laptop because of jet lag there might also be some new lessons to learn from watching TV.

As I write Ben Bernanke is laying out plans to beat inflation and gold and stocks are higher. What if he can not contain inflation? What will that mean for gold and stocks?