Welcome! I'm Janice Lowry, club secretary, which means I take the minutes and I got talked into making the web page. In the spring of 1996 six of us from the office read about the ladies in Beardstown and their investment club and thought, well, why not us? We are up to twelve now: eight women and four men, a nurse, two teachers, a retired postal worker, a farmer, an insurance agent and assorted others. Nobody is a financial professional, and that is rather the point. We learn together, one company at a time.

This page is not advice. We are twelve people with a notebook. Please make your own decisions, and talk to a professional if you want one.

• Dues. $25 a month per member, paid at the meeting. That's $300 a month going in, plus whatever the portfolio earns.
• Meetings. Second Tuesday, 7 p.m., in the community room at the library. One hour, strictly. Coffee is provided; the cookies rotate.
• Officers. A president who runs the meeting, a treasurer who keeps the books and the brokerage account, and a secretary (me) who keeps the minutes and this page.
• Stock studies. Every month two members present a company they have studied: what it does, ten years of sales and earnings, debt, the price compared to earnings, and why we would want to own it for five years or more. We vote. It takes a majority to buy and a majority to sell.
• The partnership. We are a legal partnership with a written agreement. Each member's share is tracked by the treasurer. Anyone can leave with thirty days' notice and take their share.
• The broker. A discount broker, because commissions eat small accounts alive.

1. Diversify. We own fourteen companies in eight different industries. When one has a bad year, the others carry it.
2. Think in years, not weeks. We have sold exactly three stocks since 1996, and two of those we now wish we had kept.
3. Watch the fees. Commissions and fund expenses look small and add up to real money. We figure every dollar of fees costs us about three dollars twenty years from now.
4. Buy what you understand. The farmer explained a tractor company to us better than any annual report could have. The nurse did the same with a medical supply company.
5. Don't chase the hot thing. This has been the hardest lesson of 1999. Every month someone brings in a newspaper story about an Internet company that has tripled. We have a rule: no earnings, no vote. We are sticking to it, and it has cost us some bragging rights this year.
6. Keep going. The $25 a month, every month, in good markets and bad, has done more for us than any single clever pick.

Through September the portfolio is up for the year, which we are pleased about, and it has trailed the big market index, which we are not. The index has been carried by a handful of enormous technology companies that we do not own, for the reason in lesson five. Since we started in 1996 the club has grown a good deal more than the dues we have put in. We don't post the dollar figures on the Internet, and we don't post the names of the companies we own. If you would like to know more, come to a meeting.

You need six to fifteen people who will show up every month, a written partnership agreement (the library has books with model agreements), a treasurer who likes spreadsheets, and patience. Pick a monthly amount everyone can afford forever. Agree on the rules before the first dollar goes in, especially the rules for leaving. Then study one company and buy it. That first vote is a very good feeling.

• October 12: two stock studies (a food company and a bank), and the treasurer's report on the year to date.
• November 9: annual review of everything we own. Bring your notebook.
• December 14: the holiday meeting. Short business, long cookies, and the annual "what we'd do differently" discussion.

Our neighbors in WallStreet: Paying Off $23,000 in Debt (do this first), Coupons & Rebates: The Refund Queen (Brenda could run our treasury), Balanced Books by Brenda, and Carol Anne's Bookkeeping & Tax Service, who does our partnership's tax return every spring.