About 2,000 fundsters, FAs, and others will converge on Chicago early next week for the 28th annual Morningstar Investment Conference.

Rob Arnott Research Affiliates Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

The preconference sessions will begin Monday morning, and the official conference sessions begin that afternoon. The conference is scheduled to wrap up mid-day on Wednesday. As in the past, the conference is being held at Chicago's McCormick Place convention center.

A spokeswoman for Morningstar confirms that the preliminary total attendee count (which excludes Morningstar employees) this year is 1,734, compared to just 2,000 over attendees last year. A little more than 1,000 of those 2015 attendees were advisors and as of last week, M* had about 850 advisors registered for the 2016 conference. Yet they revised that estimate this afternoon to "closer to 1,000 advisors".

Featured speakers scheduled to appear include: Rob Arnott, founder and chairman of Research Affiliates; Cliff Asness, co-founder of AQR Capital Management [profile]; Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago; Michael Hasenstab, executive vice president, PM, and chief investment officer for Franklin Templeton's [profile] Templeton Global Macro; and Bill McNabb, chairman and CEO of Vanguard [profile]. And comedian and Saturday Night Live alumnus Darrell Hammond is scheduled to make an appearance on opening night.

158 companies are exhibiting at the 2016 Morningstar Investment Conference. Big sponsors this time include: Aberdeen [profile], Capital Group's American Funds [profile], BlackRock [profile], Invesco [profile], New York Life's MainStay [profile], Natixis [profile], MassMutual's OppenheimerFunds [profile], Allianz's Pimco [profile], and Vanguard. 

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect more up-to-date registration numbers from M*.

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