Customer Reviews

Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism

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In spite of the comic book cover, this is a serious, exhaustive and enlightening study of investment clubs. The author gathered data from thousands of investment clubs, and personally attended innumerable investment club meetings in order to dissect out and correlate the various factors which seem to determine club investment success and failure. Fascinating was the importance of social dynamics in determining stock picking success and club styles of investment. Buy and hold clubs did better than, or with stop-loss orders. Sometimes stocks are picked not to hurt another member's feelings. Men pick 'boy stocks', women pick 'girl stocks'. Mixed gender, occupationally diverse clubs have more success than all male or all female. Some clubs are basically no more than social clubs, and they have the worst outcomes. The best clubs tend to break up more because the serious members are professionally mobile and move away. The conclusions are all based on careful statistical measures and painstaking time consuming observations. The only possible drawback, but one which did not keep me from giving it a 5 star rating, is that the writing was somewhat formal and dissertation-like, which one would not have expected from the come-on cover, which implied an "Investment Clubs for Dummies" interior. But, the data deserved the writing style; well worth reading and learning from for those in investment clubs, and those contemplating joining or forming one.