Co-President Nate Weaver opened the meeting by showing everyone the new club photo, which should be up on the website soon. We then began filling out the club involvement sheet for the Messiah College records. He then reminded everyone of the internship opportunity at Scottrade (email Nate with questions). Next we watched a video clip from CNN Money with Citibank's CEO Vikrom Pandit. To view the clip, follow this link http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/09/news/companies/Citi_shares.fortune/index.htm. Last week we sold half of our shares in Coach, so the rest of the meeting was dedicated to researching more stocks to buy. There were 12 members present. 

 

Nate Weaver started the meeting by informing the group that the club has a new email address, investmentclub@messiah.edu. Adam Lenon then gave his weekly economy update, primarily focusing on the Greek debt crisis. This is affecting our market, as some recent drops have been blamed on the fear of the increasing Greek debt and the possibility they will be unable to pay it off. He also pulled up graphs comparing the U.S. economy to the economies in the U.K. and Japan. Brian Turner then gave a stock presentation on Coca-Cola. He informed the club of some recent Coke news, including their efforts to make vending machines more eco-friendly, and that they strengthened their partnership with Coca-Cola Enterprise, their bottling company (essentially they bought back part of their bottling company which they previously sold). Next, Nathan Shertzer gave a stock presentation on JA Solar, a stock the club has lost a lot of money on. However, he reminded the club that the solar industry is quite young, and sharp gains, or losses in this case, can be expected. Dan McClure then talked about our portfolio overall, and suggested that we sell all or part of Coach in order to recognize our 106% gain. The club voted and decided to sell 50% of Coach. There were 13 members present.

Tonight's meeting  opened with a presentation on Excel done by a team of students from BIS 230.  Next, the club moved into a discussion on Biblically responsible investing.  Ultimately the club decided on a three tier framework to evaluate stocks in light of this responsibility.  It was concluded that if no major problems were found with a stock, that the stock would then fall into tier 1.  Tier 1 stocks are deemed suitable for purchase or sale by the club.  The second tier was made in the  case of a moral problem arising with a stock.  In this case, the stock will be reviewed by the club, and ultimately a vote will take place on a course of action.  The third tier of stocks was made for stocks that have been deemed untouchable for the investment club.  The third tier includes companies whose primary line of business falls under one or more of the following categories: alcohol, gambling, tobacco, military, adult entertainment, questionable medical practices, and payday loans.  The meeting concluded with a brief discussion on several new stocks to invest in.  However, it was deemed that more discussion and research needed to take place before any final decisions could be made.

Tonight, Jeff gave a short summary about the meeting the officers of the club had with Mr. Parmer and Professor Phipps and their feelings towards Biblically responsible investing.  The club decided to create some kind of frame work based on a three tier system that placed companies into different tiers based on their involvement with unBiblical things.  Next, Nate led us through some research on the industrial sector.  Unfortunately we were unable to come to any decisions tonight but will continue our research next club meeting.  We will not be meeting next Wednesday due to Thanksgiving break.

In the previous weeks we have had some major club activity.

On 10/29/2009 we sold all of our shares in Apple Inc. for $16,613 realizing a gain of over 100%

On 11/06/2009 we bought another share of Berkshire-b $3,393: we now own two shares which will soon be 100 shares as the company is issuing a 50 for 1 stock split in the upcoming months.

No investment club meeting was held this week in light of fall break.

Apple Inc. one of our current holdings is above $200 a share and our portfolio is above cost basis.

At this week’s meeting Jesse W. and Mike K. presented to the club on the idea of selling AT&T and perhaps buying Verizon.  They presented a power point presentation looking at contracts with companies like Google and Apple and how that will affect AT&T's future business.  After their presentation we looked at some of the underling financial information of the companies.  The investment club held an open discussion on the presentation and the idea of selling all of AT&T's stock.  It was eventually decided that the club would hold on to the AT&T stock for now but would continue to do some research in the future to make a final decision at a later date.  The investment club would like to move in the direction of having members present their ideas concerning the actions the club might take on selling current holdings or buying new prospective companies.

We found out that Brandon Rogers will not be able to continue his teaching on derivatives for several weeks.  However, we did find out that next semester he will be teaching the Investments class on Tuesday nights from 6:00PM to 9:00PM.  As for investment club this week Eddy Palmer showed us how to use Microsoft Excel's data collection tool to import data from the web into an excel spreadsheet that can easily be updated.  This will allow the club to create a spreadsheet for every stock that can be instantly updated with the current market data without having to manually enter in the new data.  In the past our club has had the stock trackers update their stocks information once a semester but we did not find this data to be very useful since it was always out of date.  With the new excel web data update feature we can always have the most current information on the stocks.  The information is gathered from Yahoo Finance and is imported into the excel spread sheet which can be updated with the click of a button.  Now on the Wiki if you go to an individual stock under the sector category, if you click on the stock name it will download and open the excel spread sheet for that stock.

Brandon Rogers spent the first 25 minutes of the meeting talking to us about derivate investments and how they can be used to hedge away risk.  In the next couple of weeks we will be learning more about these investment instruments and how we as an investment club might use them.  During the economic update Adam talked about the meeting of the G20 and how global banking regulation might be established.  Then Jeff gave a quick lesson on risk tolerance and how that changes depending on an investors age and financial goals.  Both Brandon and Jeff's presentations are located on the Wiki under the guest speaker tab.  The rest of the meeting was spent reserach individual stocks since everyone in the club has now been assigend a stock out of the portfolio to monitor and track. 

Investment Club this week was a short meeting.  Since Brandon Rogers was unable to join us to discuss options, we simply went over a few administrative things.   We looked at our portfolio and unrealized returns, volunteered to watch specific stocks individually, and talked about the membership process.  If you want to have your own stock or two to follow, let Nate or I know.  Our new membership process is simple.  As soon as you attend 5 meetings and sign the form, you are a member.  Next week will include Brandon Rogers with a discussion on options trading.

Today was our first investment club meeting of the new school year.  Jeff and Nate gave an overview of the investment club and why we do what we do.  Adam explained his role as the economist and spoke briefly about the economic events of the summer and the past few weeks.  Eddy gave a brief investing lesson on the importance of investing in the stock market and the relationship between savings and inflation.  Jesse talked about the new membership process we are implementing this year to help ensure that members are dedicated and try to attend all investment club meetings.  We had probably one of the largest turnouts in Messiah Investment Club’s history.  Hopefully our visitors will continue to come to club meetings and become contributing members of the investment club.