Group chaired by Sue Brandt

The six members of our investment group have met 10 times since we began last June. (It’s true! We really enjoy each other) We were very diverse on the depth of our experiences ranging from many years being invested to relatively little knowledge on in-vesting. We eased into the decision to invest after much discussion of what we wanted to ac-complish, and how we wanted to go about it. We decided that our purpose was to learn about the reasoning behind investing and to learn the process of actually investing, including how to open an account, if needed, and how to choose individual stocks, bonds, gold, and mutual funds, and the “why”.

First, we decided to create a portfolio of “fantasy” stocks where we each follow one stock or fund and report on its progress each meeting. We shared various information on mate-rials, magazines, brokerages, and computer programs. Last month we decided to each open an account with $300.00 and buy one stock we had researched. This stock or fund will also be dis-cussed at the meeting.

This was probably the worst time to begin investing due to the crash that has been going on this month, but we wanted to learn and learn we shall !! We will learn to be patient and say of the market, “it will come back”; “it gives us an opportunity to buy low now and hopefully sell high in the future” (double down); ” it demonstrates the need to diversify”; “it encourages us to ‘keep a shopping list’ of good stocks for when prices fall, and “it shows the wisdom of always keeping some cash on hand for this scenario”.