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A different Vegas gamble
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May 18, 2000: 6:19 a.m. ET
Individual investors flock to the desert playground for advice and a little fun
By Staff Writer Alex Frew McMillan
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LAS VEGAS (CNNfn) - In the early '80s, Charles Githler was struggling to make his investment conferences pay. The equity market had slumped and so had attendance. Only 300 or 400 individual investors were showing up to his Money Show events, and his company was in jeopardy.
"It was tough to put on shows," Githler, chairman of Sarasota, Fla.-based InterShow, admitted here at the 12th Annual Las Vegas Money Show. It's a three-day extravaganza of all things invested -- blackjack not included.
 Back in the '80s, plenty of the exhibitors were marginal, tending toward inflation-hedging products such as gold and even jewelry. Most individuals weren't that interested in stocks. Even the sophisticated investors didn't do that much of their own money management or know that much about investment products, Githler recalled.
Oh, how times have changed!
From Monday through Thursday, 14,000 individual investors swarmed to the Paris and Bally's hotels and casinos here in the Nevada desert. Thanks to volatility in the market and a growing legion of do-it-yourself investors, people have flocked here keen to get a glimpse of the newsletter writers they read and the TV stock pundits they watch.
Big money for the Money Show's organizers
The do-it-yourselfers run the gamut from novices to advanced options traders. And attendance is booming, up 30 percent over last year, according to Githler.
The event will generate revenue of $1.8 million for InterShow, he estimates. The company will gross revenue of $16 million in all, with three other Money Shows in San Francisco, Orlando, Fla., and back in Vegas for a specialty online show in October. There are also several InterShow investment cruises, commissions on cassette-tape sales and the like.
 This Las Vegas show is by far the biggest of its events. The 14,000 attendees are close to a record gathering for individual investors, he figures, up there with Warren Buffett's annual meetings for Berkshire Hathaway, which draw thousands to Omaha, Neb.
"But that's Omaha. This is Las Vegas," Githler said. With about 120,000 hotel rooms in the city and all manner of diversions outside the Money Show, what better city to hold an investment conference? Plus, the speakers get to make liberal use of jokes about how close the slot machines are to where they're busy railing about dot.coms.
Volatility helps the conference world go round
Ironically, the corner turned for InterShow's events around the time of the 1987 crash, the year the Money Show in August was titled "Investing in Topping Markets."
In an interview in the Paris casino, Githler laughs now at the accidental prescience of the timing, which narrowly preceded the October crash.
 But bad markets don't make for bad Money Show attendance, Githler pointed out. Quite the opposite, in fact, as attested by the crowds of convention goers that make navigating the faux quaint cobbled streets of Paris difficult.
Volatility is the No. 1 reason convention goers come, Githler said. The craze for online investing has also left many investors on their own. Unlike a mutual fund or other investment product they can read about, many want to test online-investing software systems at Money Shows.
Selling and being sold
Githler, an earnest and slightly hunched blond, tries to vet exhibitors as a result. He worries that being able to sweet talk attendees at the convention gives potential scam artists more credibility than a simple print ad.
He won't allow viatical-agreement companies -- which buy life insurance policies from people who aren't dead -- to have stalls at Money Shows, for instance. There may be good ones out there, but too many are shady for his tastes, he said. He also tries to limit space to repeat exhibitors and companies he knows well.
Besides testing investment products -- the exhibit halls at Bally's brim with brokerage, mutual fund, newsletter and stock exchange exhibitors -- the attendees also want to stare the newsletter writers they subscribe to in the eye.
"Basically, I'm here to find out what the best newsletters are," said Bill Miller, a Dallas-based retiree who is making this his second Money Show. "You want to feel comfortable with the individual if you're going to invest your money with any of them."
The selling had worked on Miller. "Everyone sounded pretty good, quite frankly," he said after hearing several speak on Monday and before watching Louis Rukeyser give a speech. But at least now he has material to do more homework, he figured.
Vetting the newsletter writers and fund managers
Salt Lake City residents Dee and Wanda Vowles were trying to be more discerning. After he retired as an accountant with heavy-equipment maker Pingree, Dee Vowles, now 65, got a lump sum for his retirement that he has had to manage.
 He came to check out Kevin Landis, co-founder of the Firsthand Funds. Vowles invested in one of the funds after hearing Landis speak on TV. Vowles also liked Landis, who focuses on tech stocks, because he has a relatively long track record for tech funds.
"Mostly I want to see how intelligent these guys are," Vowles said. "It's been very helpful." The Vowles have picked up another couple of funds and newsletters to follow. They have also confirmed their low opinion of Philip Springer, editor of The Retirement Letter, to which they subscribe.
Kim Githler, Charles' wife and a co-host of the events, said they shoot for a 60-40 educational-advertising mix at Money Shows, much like a magazine.
Many of the investors come knowing and wanting to be sold in some way. "I just want to be a better investor," said Leonard Letwah, who runs an RV ranch in Payson, Ariz. He found out about the Money Show through Investors Business Daily. The show was free, and they have a Las Vegas timeshare. So what's to lose? "So far so good," he said.
Larry Goldberg, a bail bondsman who lives in Thousand Oaks, Calif., is here to learn more about options. He just started trading them through his Morgan Stanley Dean Witter broker.
His wife, Beverly, is along for the ride. "I just follow him," she kidded. They're staying in the MGM Grand and making a vacation of it. And getting a kick out of it, judging by their smiles. Larry Goldberg said if he learns a bit more about the tech stocks he devotes himself to, all the better.
Business plan: free admission, plenty of upgrades
Though some of the speeches and lunch panels charge $59 or higher for admission, almost all attendees get in for free to the show and most events.
Many of the newsletters and other exhibitors offer to register their subscribers for the Money Show as a perk, through affiliate programs. Attendees are offered numerous ways to upgrade their tickets, and a $300 to $400 "first class" package gets you into all the events.
Most of the speakers speak for free, too. Rukeyser, the well-known television host, received "upwards of $30,000," Githler said, for a monologue and to host the headline event on the first night of the show.
But he is the only paid speaker -- the likes of Joe Battipaglia and Elaine Garzarelli, both well-known stock pundits, spoke for free. The marketing opportunity makes the trip worthwhile, when there are so many investors to address at one time, said Battipaglia, chief financial strategist of Gruntal & Co.
Occasionally an event might pick up a hotel tab. But Gruntal normally pays his way, "just for new relationships and contacts," he said.
Investors like to look the pundits they've watched on TV in the eye, he said, which is why he thinks events like the Money Show are good marketing. "They're an invaluable experience for a world that goes on sound bites," Battipaglia said.
Sin City has its own call
In fact, most of the speakers have paid to be here, indirectly, by buying a booth at the investment show. Those run $4,000, Githler said.
The attendees have a good time roaming around Las Vegas, more or less the biggest adult-oriented mall in existence. The Vowles rent an apartment in Las Vegas for seven months over the winter. They don't gamble, but they still love the city.
"It's the fine dining and the entertainment," Dee Vowles said, his enthusiasm bubbling over for a place where you can literally take in Venice, Paris and ancient Rome -- or what Hollywood might make of them, anyway -- in a single glance, over a martini.
The Money Show is almost an aside when Spago and Le Cirque restaurants vie for the Vowles' dining dollars and Gucci, Armani and DKNY tempt them as shoppers. Almost.
"You like to see the flowers and the artwork at Bellagio," Wanda Vowles said, referring to the indoor water garden at the hotel across the street from Paris. The $12 admission to the art gallery there is money well spent to see works by the likes of Picasso and Renoir, she added, particularly when the works are slated to be sold off to pay down debt on the enormous hotel.
"That's $400 million worth of art," she said. Who wouldn't want to look at it before it goes? But what the hey? It's only money. 
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