Stocktoberfest LIVES. You can sign up today for the 100 remaining spots (the first 50 were snapped up) and join the Stocktwits team, many of the Stocktwits bloggers that helped start this community and our distinguished speakers. You can join us in one of the easiest accessible charming places in America, if not the world.

In October 2008, most people were betting on the end of the world. ‘Too Big Too Fail’ was failing. ‘Financial Leverage’ was a wrecking ball through Ireland and Iceland and was headed our way.

In March 2009, the bet looked pretty good. People were leaning into the trade.

But, the market bottomed. In hindsight, only Tiger Woods topped in 2009 (November).

Now, here we are in September 2012 and Wells Fargo ($WFC) is near all-time highs (I think there should be asterisk next to all bank stocks that took TARP), and the government is selling half it’s stake in $AIG for $18 billion (proving the government can print money and win every trade but can’t run a post office).

So, what the hell does this have to do with Stocktoberfest?

First off, investing is hard (John – who wrote this post, will be there in attendance). It’s also lonely. There are no bailouts for us or ‘acquihires’.

Stocktoberfest is for investors and traders that do it themselves. It’s a celebration of investing and investors. It’s for novices and experts, people that are thinking about investing for the first time and people that do it for a profession. Stocktoberfest is about ‘Social Leverage’ and ‘Too Small to Fail’. It is about connecting dots between start-up investing and public markets, about spotting winners from a crowd of winners. It’s about how to take a loss and move on. Since 2005, I have learned to use The ‘Social Web’ to start companies and leverage myself into big trends. I believe everyone can do it.

My talented and hilarious friend Josh Brown will be taking about the asset allocation. JC Parets, a CMT, will take us through some history of markets and with Brian Shannon talk about the markets today.

Our keynotes are running fabulous ‘Too Small to Fail’ companies in Finance and Banking including Greg Garrabrants, the CEO of Bank of the Internet ($BOFI) and Paul Grinberg, the CFO of Encore Capital Grouo ($ECPG). Bill Gurtin runs $6.5 billion of fixed income money, which is considered a small amount in the industry (not to me). Bill has some amazing insights into the California Municipal Bond Markets and fixed income in general. Michael Parekh was the internet analyst at Goldman Sachs in the 90’s and has been a private investor since his departure in 2001. Michael and I love talking about the future and with technologies colliding as they are today, there are huge profits to be reaped from surfing the right trends. GNIP and Trade Ideas will talk about the new age of social data. Noah Pepper from Lucky Sort will show off some dashboards for managing this data. I am assembling a top group of investors and traders that focus on trends and momentum. I will also do a deep dive/explanation on how to work with The Stocktwits 50 and get the most out of Stocktwits.

There will be no Black Swan farming. Black Swan farming is cool now that Tech Stars and Y Combinator have opened up the doors for tens of thousands of startups to create them. At Stocktoberfest we will talk more about getting out of the way of financial Black Swans and hear from investors and leaders that survived them and steered their companies and portfolios through them.

There will be no hackathons at Stocktoberfest, unless you consider trading from the bathroom a hackathon. So do bring your laptop and iphones.

The media hates the stock market in 2012 and if you trade stocks, you are evil and dumb. In 1989, the media hated the stock market, but as Peter Lynch (manager of The Fidelity Funds) was quoted at the time:

“Long-term investing has gotten so popular, it’s easier to admit you’re a crack addict than to admit you’re a short-term investor.”

You can’t count on the media, you can count on a great community like Stocktwits. We take all this very seriously.

I hope to see you in Coronado.