2026 Ben Graham Conference – Brian Belski Says a Small-Cap Storm Is Coming as the Secular Bull Runs Toward 2034

Brian Belski opened the 2026 Ben Graham Conference, hosted by CFA Society New York, by warning that he was about to break a few rules. The founder, chief executive and chief investment officer of Humilis Investment Strategies has spent 36 years on Wall Street, including stints at William O’Neil, Piper Jaffray, Merrill Lynch and a 13-year run building a $12.5 billion strategy business at BMO Capital Markets. His message to the room: this is still a secular bull market, the next leadership will not be the obvious AI names, and the most overlooked opportunity in the market is small and mid-cap stocks.

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A Process, Not a Formula

Belski emphasized that investing is not reducible to a single indicator. He builds a top-down model on valuation, scoring earnings multiples, sales multiples, cash-flow multiples and an inverted dividend yield across the market, eleven sectors and then individual industries, before marrying that framework to themes and bottom-up fundamentals. He is dismissive of investors who try to “buy CPI and PPI and quant models,” and equally dismissive of those who lean on a single screen such as the Shiller P/E. The work is reading what a company actually does, who runs it, how they earn their money and whether they are upfront on conference calls and in communications with investors.

He offered three thematic rules.