Investment Club

I recently joined an investment club. Eric, a friend of mine through volleyball, invited me to attend meeting of a club he is in. I attended two meetings, met most of the other members, and decided to join. Yesterday was the first meeting in which I would have been a full member, and I missed it.

The club is named Capital Hill Investment Club, which acronyms nicely to CHIC. The club in turn is a member of the National Association of Investors Corporation, an umbrella group of investment clubs. I was familiar with the NAIC before attending the CHIC meetings through an official investment guide I bought some years ago.

The way the club works is each member will contribute $50 a month, and then the club will follow NAIC procedures to evaluate various companies. We'll all vote on what to buy or sell. The primary goal is to learn about investing and how to evaluate a company. Our secondary goal is to double our money in five years, which will require choosing stocks that appreciate about 15% a year. The club has around ten or twelve members so we'll have a reasonable amount of money to invest, which will let us keep between ten and twelve stocks in our club portfolio.

I think it will be fun. I've been investing here and there on my own and this will bring some discipline I can apply. A few times a year each member will be required to pick a few companies to study, so expect future blog entries on that. I am fascinated by the pharmaceutical and/or biotech industries, and will probably pick companies in those areas.