******** 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?

Our club is meeting on Sunday and I'm pleased to say I'm going to be able to report that the portfolio has gone up by over 10% since the last meeting two months ago, and thats inspite of writing off two of our holdings and removing them from the portfolio!

Thought I'd let you know a little about the Kinvest Investment Club based in Kinross, Scotland.
We are an associate club of the Kinross 50+ Club and all Kinvest members must be members of the parent Club.
We started in June 1997 with 20 members and, with resignations as recent as last April, now have 8 members. (Well anyone can lose interest when not making money!)
Let me know if you live in the Kinross area and would be interested in joining an investment club.
Our profitable shares are BHG, BRJK, EDG, IPR, MCTY, NFDS, & TSCO while DUC, MMG, & MRW which are at various stages of recovery (well great loss as far as Duc & MMG are concerned).
Earlier this year we prepared graphs comparing the share we held with the Sector and FTSE 100. The starting point was the time we bought that share.
We were pleased to find that our selection came out on top. This gave us the confidence to hold them over the Spring dips to this recovery period.

I agree with an earlier contributor that Sector selection is critical.
We have chosen on factors like Sector strength, Cash rich company, Defensive shares like food and drink, and New Managing Director with new focus.
Hope this speel triggers a few discussions.

Had a good meeting yesterday. It was a lovely day and had the meeting, and lunch in the Gazebo of one of the members.

We agreed to buy VRD straight away to put away for the long term and collect dividends and buy NICL & SCTN between now and the next meeting on a limit order at a agreed price, quite a bit lower than the current price. If the share price drops we buy, if it doesn't we have more cash at the next meeting!

Don't you just love the market!

All three of the shares we were interested in went Ex div today. VRD which we bought on Monday (as we thought it would hold after) has dropped over 4% so far, the other two which we thought would drop so decided to see if we could buy after they dropped - well NICL is down less than 0.5% and SCTN is up slightly!

Hello all

I have not popped in for a while, nice to see a few posts.
Great news is that we are now an investment club in profit.
The first time in our 27 month history.

The star of the show is Burtonwood currently +41%

We went as low as -30% just goes to show it pays to hold your nerve and not jump ship like many have.

ROLLEY What part of the world are you in?

August turned out to be a quiet month.

Just got an extention on the clubs main trading account to provide verification from the members to comdirect (we opened this account in March) or they will suspend the account. Trouble is the chair has been in Australia visiting family since the beginning of July and does not seem to be in any hurry to return to the UK! (Thank god I didn't provide all the members on the account opening details or I really would be in trouble!)

They also are putting their charges up from 7.50 a deal to 12.50 a deal.

One of the members is leaving next month as he wants to take the money to finance a round the world trip for his wife (and he is going too!) We have the cash available so it won't be a problem, but the rest of us will miss him, especially as the lunches he provided for some of the meetings were really excellent.....

Little woman

You may want to look at Harg and Land, we are paying 9.95 per deal.
They also pay interest on cash balance.

We are still showing a very small profit.

Harg and Land? tried to locate a web page, but no luck. Could you let me have more info?

www.hargreaveslansdown.co.uk

Found it!

Meeting on Sunday. DYS (thanks vasey) a purchase after the last meeting is doing very well. Expecting quite a high turnout as only one apology so far and the members who live overseas are actually in the UK at the moment!

i would like to join an investment club. Do u know any in central/south manchester. Thanks

I live in the west coast of scotland and am very interested in jioning the club.

Swansea group next meet Monday 5 Jan. (As per post No 2, this is a 'skills/info exchange' club, not a pooling-of-money club.).
Anyone within 25 miles or so interested, let me know. At Monday's meeting this week we looked at the 2004 Stockmarket Almanac, compared notes on stake-size calculation when spreadbetting, and looked at particular stocks/indices that each of us had been working with lately.

juzzle,

Your meeting sounds intresting and well structured.

Do you have any comments on the 2004 Almanac please?
Is it all US based, or is there UK stuff too?
( I have ordered it for my Xmas present!)

Just got back from the meeting - for once I didn't drink too much wine!

Meeting only lasted an hour and a half! (2-3 hrs is normal) before we sat down to a lovely meal. Home made baked cheese cake to finish! Most of the time was spent discussing our shares in OOM shares bought nearly 2 years ago, which lookes like they may finally be about to go into profit (current loss of 1%)! I was looking for an agreement about selling them, as they are held in a account with Barclays (dealing charges are too high & the service we get almost non existant) who we no longer use for our new purchases. These shares are also not in line with our current strategy of investing in financially solid companies paying dividends. The members agreed I can sell at any time before the next meeting if we are showing a 10% profit.

This time we met at one of the members homes near Bromley. The next meeting is fixed for February at another members home Nr Staplehurst in Kent.

Hello All, I asked if anyone knows of an investment club in central South Manchester. Do you happen ot have a website where i could research. Please help. Thanks

Hi Andy,
Yes, Almanac is entirely US related. I like the format and would be interested in a UK version if there were one (c'mon David Schwartz, do one).

Laid out as a diary (and usable as such) with bear or bull icons on dates where combinations of expiry dates etc (and dozens of other date-specific or cyclical factors) might be expected to have a positive or negative impact. Even where such effects produce a mere dampening of a trend, rather than a reversal of it, I imagine it might be useful in perhaps delaying or accelerating intended buy/sell timings. I would be interested in some feedback from you Andy, say 3 months into the new year, re how its information actually helps or not. The member of our group who bought it is a trader of indices (US mainly) and we will be seeking feedback from him too.

jzl

First point of call for investment clubs is this web site: http://www.proshare.org (http://www.proshare.org)

Sorry - this one's even better! http://www.proshareclubs.co.uk/ (http://www.proshareclubs.co.uk/)

Juzzle,

Ok thanks for that, it does sound interesting, although, like you say, it's a shame there isn't a UK version.

I will be happy to provide feedback.

Regards,

Andy.