12-25-2021, 11:38 AM
In the early days I was in an investing club.
20 or so years ago I organized a marketing club for a bunch of farmers. Everyone put $500 in and we traded commodities, options, etc., as a group.
Trying to figure how an investing club along the same lines would work. You could take "pool money" and use it for passive index investing and let each member do his or her own thing and compare notes. Problem is a) you'd need a lot more than $500 to work with, unless you just did it as a hypothetical - there used to be stock market games around and b) stocks investing is much longer-term than grain. Yes, there are some longer term cycles and supply-demand patterns but 90% of it is really working within a growing season (said growing season being from March 1 - December 1).
There was a nearby Investing Meetup Club I thought about joining but they had a set system I wasn't sold on.
One of the more rewarding things I ever did was bully a dozen of my military subordinates into spending a few hours with me one on one learning the very basics of what they could do with their 401K plan.
I have done this as well with younger colleagues. Fidelity manages our retirement funds and will automatically put you into one of the Vanguard retirement funds - mine was a 2025 when they opened this up (until a dozen or so years ago we were stuck with TIAA-CREF). But we have the option of self-directing our investments; MFs only, no individual stocks. So I'd talk about what I do and how much better they can do if they realize they're in it for the long haul and go with funds that rate as higher risk rather than stick with the default. It's pretty easy to look at 3- and 5-year return charts and Morningstar risk ratings in a few minutes.
Fenders, I'm glad you're feeling better.
20 or so years ago I organized a marketing club for a bunch of farmers. Everyone put $500 in and we traded commodities, options, etc., as a group.
Trying to figure how an investing club along the same lines would work. You could take "pool money" and use it for passive index investing and let each member do his or her own thing and compare notes. Problem is a) you'd need a lot more than $500 to work with, unless you just did it as a hypothetical - there used to be stock market games around and b) stocks investing is much longer-term than grain. Yes, there are some longer term cycles and supply-demand patterns but 90% of it is really working within a growing season (said growing season being from March 1 - December 1).
There was a nearby Investing Meetup Club I thought about joining but they had a set system I wasn't sold on.
One of the more rewarding things I ever did was bully a dozen of my military subordinates into spending a few hours with me one on one learning the very basics of what they could do with their 401K plan.
I have done this as well with younger colleagues. Fidelity manages our retirement funds and will automatically put you into one of the Vanguard retirement funds - mine was a 2025 when they opened this up (until a dozen or so years ago we were stuck with TIAA-CREF). But we have the option of self-directing our investments; MFs only, no individual stocks. So I'd talk about what I do and how much better they can do if they realize they're in it for the long haul and go with funds that rate as higher risk rather than stick with the default. It's pretty easy to look at 3- and 5-year return charts and Morningstar risk ratings in a few minutes.
Fenders, I'm glad you're feeling better.