"Those are the two oldest and most familiar ways of managing risk, for most people," he said.

Some of the "safe" investment instruments he advocated included inflation-protected bonds, inflation-proof annuities, index funds, iShares and index options.

Advisors got a brighter outlook on equities later in the convention from keynote speaker Jeremy Siegel, professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Stocks for the Long Run.

Siegel started out his presentation by noting the last time he spoke to an FPA crowd was in 1998, and joked, "If we could have just jumped from 1998 to today, it would have been a lot easier."

Despite the volatility of recent years, Siegel says the data continues to back up the argument that equities are a desirable investment for the long term-more so than fixed-income vehicles.

He predicts that equities will provide annual returns of 5% to 7% after inflation, and that concerns about continued over-valuation of stocks is unjustified.

Siegel argues that the proof to his argument is contained in 200 years of history. By analyzing equity data stretching all the way back to 1802, Siegel maintains that equities have provided average after-inflation annual returns of 6.7% since that time. Bonds, meanwhile, have brought returns of 3.6%.

A dollar invested in equities in 1802, he says, now has an after-inflation value of $516,241. "The equity growth rate doubles your purchasing power every ten years," he says.

Siegel did inject one note of caution as far as the economy is concerned. He noted that the gap between the nation's average retirement age and life expectancy is growing ever wider, from 1.5 years in 1950 to more than 14 years now. As retirees begin to outnumber workers, he said, two questions arise: Who will produce the goods, and who is going to buy the assets of the baby boomers? Siegel says the answer lies with the younger populations of China, India, Indonesia and other developing nations. "By the middle of this century, the developing countries will own more than 80% of all world assets," he says.

As for more current events, speakers warned advisors of the changes of the immediate past and possibly the immediate future, that could impact them directly.