Have you ever considered investment, and wished you understood more about stocks and shares? If so, why not join the Investment Section. We meet once a month in Letchworth to make buy and sell decisions on our portfolio. The meetings are light-hearted and enjoyable, although serious discussions take place.

The Investment Section was set up in 1996 by fourteen founder members who were largely ignorant of the workings of stock market. Each made regular contributions of at least £20 a month so that they could learn about and participate in Stock Market investments with pooled funding. We now have around twenty members.

The investments made by the Investment Section are seen as long-term, although members can always withdraw some or all of their investments with about one month’s notice.    

All members are encouraged to participate and to enhance their understanding of the workings of the Stock Market and to inform the Section’s investment decisions to increase our profits. We welcome suggestions for new buys, preferably based on members’ judgments. We obtain data from published sources and to help inform our decisions. We seldom hold more than around twenty shareholdings in total and their value is currently £185,000.

We have found that an adventurous investment strategy is more to the liking of our members than “steady as she goes”.  As a result, we probably do more trades than would be the case with pension-style investments and the mix of shares is usually well spread between sectors. We have a few stocks which are extremely volatile.  We all understand that such a strategy is relatively risky, and that we should not invest more than we can afford – in the worst case – to lose.

Nowadays we accept regular monthly subscriptions between £20 and £250 as well as lump sums. Longer-standing members have seen investment returns over 100% (who have benefited from greater "time in the market"), but newer joiners much less. However, none of our members has suffered a significant loss since the club began. The lowest gain is around 3% for the most recent joiner. Needless to say, past performance is no guarantee of future performance, alas!

We are always looking for new members who might be interested in participating in the club’s activities, learning more about stocks and shares, and investing on a regular basis. We normally suggest that one of our monthly meetings is attended before deciding to join so the way we work is understood and to see if it is to your liking. If you are interested in attending, please get in touch with the Secretary, Roger Harriss, the Treasurer, Richard Smith, or the Chairman, Frank Everest, to get more details and to fix a date.