How Do You Start an Investment Club?

Posted by admin on July 6, 2007 in Misc.

Does anyone belong to an investment club or a book club dictated to personal finance? I belong to a mastermind group for business people based on the model first made popular by Napolean Hill’s book, Think & Grow Rich; basically, I meet once a month with other entrepreneurs and we share our goals, discuss our issues and attempt to hold each another accountable to our shared goals through accountability partners. The point of the mastermind group is to help fellow business owner attain the next level of success through advice, suggestions and encouragement. The goal of an investment club would be appropriately the same- it is a forum to exchange ideas, keep people accountable to their goals and, if the members wanted, to pool money to invest. I joined an investment club about 18 months ago but it dis-solved very quickly. The membership was a little too diverse- we had members who were retired and had pensions sitting beside 30-something entrepreneurs who were building their net worth; Everyone was great but there was no commonality of goals and it is hard to build any club, much less one built on personal finance and investments, with such a wide array of life experiences and differing goals.

The investment club also grappled with the issue of guest speakers and presentations- we wanted experts to come in and share some of their knowledge but without the club being sold on an investment products. It was a fine line to draw and we had some issues recruiting speakers as a result. Unfortunately, it was a noble but short lived experiment. If we had to do it all over again, I would recommend that there be a membership fee to ensure that members had skin in the game, a more formal agenda and a greater commonality of interest among the investment club members.

I would like to know if anyone has had any experience in a personal finance mastermind group or investment club? If so, what works and what doesn’t? It would be an interesting experiment to build another one. If you have not belonged to such a club, your suggestions would be welcome in what you would like to see if you were thinking of joining one. If I have enough responses, I’ll write a post on adapting the mastermind group structure I am now a part of (which is very effective) to an investment club context and hopefully circulate a template for people interested in forming one but wanting some ideas on structure.

Given the strange week because of the holiday, I’ll run remainder posts on this subject for the next few weeks. Looking forward to your comments. Have a great weekend.

8 Comments on How Do You Start an Investment Club?

By MillionDollarJourney.com on July 6, 2007 at 9:05 am

I’ve always wanted to join a local stock trading/investment club. Nothing like that around here, perhaps b/c we’re a smaller community. Maybe that’s why I’ve turned to blogging as my personal finance outlet.

By Investoid on July 7, 2007 at 7:22 pm

I briefly started one with some friends, but it was tough to get them to find it interesting. There used to be a full fledged investment club in my city, but it eventually disbanded as well.

I’ve thought about doing it with some of my entrepreneur buddies, but I think most of them are so focused on high multiple returns that they find equity investing rather boring. As I start to delve into the short term trading a bit more, I may find more people interested in getting together.

I think the key is to find people with similar investment goals (as you alluded to in your post). I think a breadth of knowledge/experience is fine, as long as everybody is interested in pursuing the same type of investments.

Nowadays with online forums, blogs, social networks, etc. do you still feel the need for face-to-face groups like this? I do, since I find value in the personal interaction. What about you?

By admin on July 8, 2007 at 10:38 am

Thanks for the comment, the issue with forums, blogs and other on-line interaction is that there are variety of opinions on how to invest so the only commonality of interest is that one is interested about personal finance. Ideally, you should find people in the same life stage with approximately the same investing strategies.

By Growth in Value on July 9, 2007 at 2:29 pm

I’ve never been in an investment club, but I’d love to be in one.

That desire to chat and learn with others about financial/investing problems is actually the reason I started a pfblog. So now that I think about it, maybe I AM in one…

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By Happy Value Investing on August 3, 2007 at 9:04 pm

Investment club is a good idea to get the like-minded people together. I have been thinking about joining or start an investment club on value investing or personal finance in Toronto area…

By Happy Value Investing on August 4, 2007 at 2:09 pm

Check out Proshare website, it covers wide topics about investment club. The link is
http://www.proshareclubs.co.uk/cgi-bin/proshareclubs/home/home.cgi

Hope this helps.