******** The Investment club thread ****

The aim of this thread is for people to share experiences of existing clubs and help people join clubs, or even start new ones in their own area.
With the personal message feature on Money am we should be able to bring people together.

Looking to join or start a club? just leave your details here.

Are you an existing club looking for new members?

Thanks for that Juzzle, will check it out.

The cheapest broker I have come across for Clubs is 7.50 per trade.
With Auto stop loss and limit orders, also they offer alert service.

That is offered by Comdirect


Anyone found one cheaper?

8 Ball, at that price I wouldn't bother looking further! Nowt wrong with comdirect. (Hoodless Brennan do 7 per trade but I wouldn't go there. No comparison.)

I use Har Land presently, but they have stopped new accounts due to the hassle.
They are 9.95 per trade and offer good interest on cash.
However I do not like the fill or Kill system they operate.

In an investment club in Esher. To say the value of stocks we have are bombed out would be an understatement. In fact we stopped putting new money in till we saw the market change, and that was 18 months ago. Have now had a nice short holiday on that money that I saved.

I would hope that the agenda of most investment clubs would be mostly made up of education, at times when buying shares is the least they want to do.

Your timing was spot on MoneyMakesMoney.

We started about the same time as you got out, We/I have learnt a lot in that time, education as Juzzle said.
We are not in profit but have outperformed the main market in that time.
The last 6 months we have picked up some high yield stocks, which should help us in the future.

We have continued puting money in on a regular basis, but changed from high risk to high yeild. Most of the purchases in the last 6 months are showing profit, and we keep looking at new strategies etc. Although we normally purchase for the long term, because the market is so volatile on the short term, we are now taking profit earlier (before it drops back!) than we would have in the past. Then a couple of months later, if it has drop back enough (and we still like the share!) we go back in. It has been a very good learning process and meetings are even more interesting than the were before. Although a slow process, we are clawing back the huge profits we made in the early years, and to keep the Captial Gains down, getting rid of the dead wood, as and when we have enough gains, to cover the losses so the portfolio doesn't look so depressing! Our Income yield is currently 4.1% even with the "dead wood"!!!!

Looks like we are following the same tactics at present Little woman.

Our shares with a High yield are.....

Beatties (BTT) 9.8%
Lloyds TSB (LLOY) 8.5%
United util (UU.) 7.9%
Legal & Gen (LGEN) 6.8%

We currently hold 14 stocks Only 4 pay no dividend.

We currently hold 28 stocks, and 12 pay no dividend.

That's a lot of stocks 28, pleased I don't have to do your spreadsheet each month.

We started a share club just two years ago,and contribute 10 a week each.We deal through Hargreaves Lansdown, mainly because this made our treasurers job very easy and everything is accountable on the net for every member.
At present we are 109 up over the two year period, whilst this is not a great amount we have outperformed the FTSE quite considerably.
We buy everything on a T/A approach and tend to only buy stocks on a strong uptrend and are close to support, two that we are waiting to buy when everything is favourable are NHP and HRN.
At the meetings that we have once a month we take a laptop and overhead projector, and use Sharescope End of Day. We decided that there had to be a social side to the club so we arrange regular meals together,and have all become very good friends which I feel is essential when money is involved.

Yes the social side is very important. We take turns to provide a very nice meal after every meeting. The few members who can't host the meetings, sometimes borrow another members kitchen so they don't feel left out! We've been going nearly 5 years. After the first year, we changed our rules, so that we would hold less meetings, and did not make it compulsory to attend. Every member gets copies of the minutes, so they know whats going on, and as the treasurer I'm allowed a bit of flexiblity - but as the majority of the members are on e-mail (even if they don't check it very often!) if there is something I think we should buy or sell, I will normally e-mail them and let them know what I want to do. We have a few rules that we all have to following like always leaving a least 1,000 in the bank for emergencies. Spending no more than 1000 purchase, and we try to spread in as many sectors as possible. The high risk purchases are always agreed at meetings, but some of the other have been done outside the meeting. And today we now hold to 31 shares!

"..as treasurer I am allowed a bit of flexibility.."

Fatal that. Never trust the treasurer.. It's always the treasurer who bumps of the chairman and does a runner ;-)

FIFTH TIME LUCKY FOR COURT KINGS

By John Husband


THE Sudbury Court has won our monthly investment clubs competition for a fifth time. The club, founded by actor Ray Marioni, picked last month's best performing share, supermarket giant Safeway.

Ray said: "With at least four companies wanting to buy it we figured that there was no way the shares could fall. And we were proved right. Everything else went down but they held up."

The 1,000 prize cheque could not have come at a better time. "It's been terrible, just terrible," said Ray. "At the height of the dotcom boom three years ago our fund was worth 60,000. Now we're down to 12,000.

"But don't get me wrong. We have had a few winners such as Lloyds underwriters Atrium. We're showing a 22 per cent profit on them. But almost everything else is down."

Now the Sudbury and all our other investment clubs have another chance to compete in our new Footsie Flyer competition in partnership with Proshare.

The Footsie Flyer game, in partnership with Proshare and City Deal, is open to Mirror and ProShare clubs which have been going for at least three months. Just pick which leading FTSE 100 share will show the biggest gain or smallest loss by the end of this month. As a tie-breaker, give your reason why in not more than 25 words.

Add the code word: "Valentine" and your ProShare Investment Club number to make your entry valid. We're taking the starting prices from this Friday and the closing prices on Friday, February 28.

Entries can be emailed to jonathan.agbenyega@proshare .org faxed to 020 7220 1731 or on a postcard to Mirror Investment Club Competition, ProShare Investment Clubs, Centurion House, 24 Monument Street, London EC3R 8AQ, to arrive by Monday, February 10. Courtesy of our sponsor City Deal, part of the Abbey National, the winning club will receive an account credited with 1,000 and free trading for a year. City Deal offers a full range of services, for details, call 0800 917 8889.

-IF you want to start an investment club, details are in the ProShare manual. It costs 29.50 but Mirror readers who ring 020 7220 1750 with credit card details pay 25, p&p free.

Our club currently has two vacancies.
Current members live in Shropshire/Mid Wales area.

I'm in the process of opening an account for the investment club with comdirect and notice on the form that they have teamed up with ProShare and offer FREE PROSHARE MEMBERSHIP for a year.

Always interested in meeting people interested in Resources Sector or Lloyd's Insurance sectors, in or around London, Surrey, Sussex by all means get in touch.

I have made money pretty consistantly now since October 1999 long only in a bear market, albeit it like everyone have got clobbered a few times made a few stupid mistakes over last three and a half years.

Refer my profile for contact details.

I sent an e-mail, but not sure if it worked.

So just in case - are you interested in joining an existing club or starting a new one? Or something I didn't think of - just want to meet up with others with the same interests?

LW,

Really just meet up with others with similar interests, pool ideas and try to beat a down market.

Right now being long is a tough call, I think specialising and being very sector specific is the only way to make money long IMHO in counter cyclicals, defensive, or special growth situations.

My gut feel resources, Lloyd's and maybe health/pharmaceuticals, but all ideas welcome, I am still very bearish on market for March 2003 expecting UKX around 3330 area this month by end of tax year selling.

So being sector specific is IMHO only way to survive right now.

Cheers

Ash

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