Hi All, I’ve been communicating with a number of you this summer, either in one-off formats or in group discussions on AnalystForum, about potential investment ideas. I was contemplating taking things to another level and escalate the amount of commitment involved. What would this level be, you ask? Prospectively, it would be called the AF Investors Club until we come up with an alternate name. The group could go live after Labor Day, main mission of this group would be simple – (1) to share actionable investment ideas with others on this forum, and (2) to provide thoughtful critique of the stock analysis and pitches so that others may learn how to improve their stockpicking skills. This mission may evolve depending on the needs and goals of its members. The format would be simple - every two weeks, one member of the group will submit a stock pitch and analysis to others to review. We will then have a call where the presenter will deliver the pitch and field thoughtful questions from other members. In short, this would essentially be an investment committee comprised of AF members, without an actual portfolio. We can also share macro views too. There are no fees or funds to be exchanged among any members - it’s free to join. Simply, the selection of members will be based on work experience and commitment to the forum. It isn’t based solely on work experience as we don’t have a fund that we’ll actively manage, and looking only at work experience would undermine the spirit of AF to enhance the investment acumen of its constituents. I am looking for some “initial members” to help with this process since this isn’t a one-man show. To ensure the quality and commitment of contributions, we will also develop a procedure wherein members may vote to excuse others from the group if the quality of their contributions are not sufficient, so as to prevent the free-rider problem. What are your thoughts and level of interest? Please share your feedback freely here, as this is just my preliminary “vision.” Also if you want to potentially play a more active role in the group, please e-mail me at numi.advisory@gmail.com and we can discuss. Thanks.
P.S. If we have e-mailed about investing ideas in recent months and/or you are a regular poster with actionable investment recommendations here, I’d hope you’d consider joining. We’d probably cap the initial enrollment between 5-10 members just to see if something like this will actually work.
count me in.
I’ve hoped AF would evolve into the aforementioned, but rarely do our topics go 10 replies without mentioning qqqbee or some other tangent. I’m thinking it should mirror VIC (Value Investors Club). I would definitely be in. If all else fails we can turn the AF Fantasy League form into AF IC.
This sounds like it may be interesting. I’ll be down.
I’m down; I’ll shoot you an email Numi. Hopefully, a good number of people sign on. This is a great opportunity for AF members to sharpen on their presentation/analysis skills.
Thanks guys. I’ve received a number of emails about selection criteria so just to clarify, not everyone that wants to join will get in simply because of (1) capacity of the group and (2) selection criteria. I’d say based on the responses so far I’ve gotten via e-mail, we are looking at people with 3+ years of front-office finance experience (banking, research, private equity, venture capital) or 2+ years as buy-side analysts. Based on feedback from a few of the initial participants, while it’s true that this is an opportunity for people to expand their knowledge base, it will not be a good fit for people that do not already have a solid foundation in idea evaluation and analysis or who don’t have basic experience in idea generation.
How would we share our stock picks? On AF? If that’s the case, how would you keep it private? If they’re going to be shared only with “members,” then it’s not really sharing ideas with the AF community. So, is this a private club that will “meet” elsewhere, or would it reside here?
Numi, check your junk mail.
Sounds interesting, numi. I’d be interested, although I don’t generally do company analysis. I do do country analysis, though. What’s the level of effort that you’re expecting from members in terms of output. I think that doing things to avoid free ridership is good, but we also want to make sure that we’re not overwhelmed with expectations.
Oh we were supposed to email you? I’ll send you an email tonight then.
Guys, it would be a private group carried out via email discussions / google groups. Bchadwick, please email me with any questions that you may have and we can discuss. You raise some good points re: expectations and other things. Lastly anyone that’s interested, please e-mail me or post here and we’ll start reaching out in the coming days and weeks. There is no hard and fast process for selections. Commitment to investing is the most important but I only mentioned the aforementioned work experience criteria because (1) that is the background of some of our “starting members” and (2) it is used to provide some gauge or benchmark for what is otherwise a case by case basis. It’s the challenging task of trying to be inclusive, yet keeping the caliber sufficiently keep the discussions productive and pertinent to the experienced members. Another way to look at it is to help intermediate and advanced analysts get better. And this club isn’t limited to equities or a single investment strategy either.
would this count towards CFA work experience? : )
^ I wish it would! Anyway, thanks all for your interest, have been getting some e-mails so will try to write back in the next few days. Taking off for a brief vacation in Europe tomorrow. Also in case there was any confusion, the “AF Investors Club” is just a temporary name. It’s not a part of AF per se, just comprised of members of this forum.
Another option would be to post all your recommendations on Seeking Alpha and then link to them here so everyone could check out your work. I’d be willing to bet Chad would sticky a thread, or otherwise make it accommodating. An investment club that doesn’t actually invest in anything kind of seems like a circle jerk. If you want to go on record and get some feedback, no one is stopping you. Why do it with 5-10 members when you could do it in front of everyone? /or start your own blog
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Sweep the Leg, That’s a viable suggestion; however there are a couple key issues as I see it: (1) A main component of this group is that we intend to foster live discussions. Much like engaging in Socratic dialogue in college or in business school, or even sitting in front of an investment committee pitching your ideas, one can often learn as much from the questions that are being asked as you can from the stock pitch itself. The key for our group is to put together a bunch of people that can bring different perspectives to the table, have demonstrated experience in doing so, and who will be committed to engaging in this type of dialogue. (2) There is no quality control SeekingAlpha, and the goal here is to come up with good, actionable investment ideas. We don’t want to put everything out there so a bunch of random nobodies can use the information. That kills the edge. Plus, there will be a lot of non-participation among users – again, the free-rider problem. This club is different because non-participants can get excused from the group. This may come across as somewhat draconian, but potential members of the group seem to support it so far. Also keep in mind that this is just an initial gauge of interest. We don’t know how this thing is going to evolve but we need to get started somehow. Right now, potential members include a macro guy, a volatility trader, a couple sell-side folks, a portfolio manager, and myself…not exactly a hedge fund guy since I just interned there this summer and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface of all the things I hope to learn about this business, but hopefully 5+ years in equity research and private equity will be useful to other members. We’ll see what happens. This club may take some time to get off the ground, but we are going to try it with a small group (5-10 people) and potentially expand later on. Obviously our long term goal is to maintain a certain caliber of dialogue, but we also want to be as inclusive as possible especially in the long-run. Mostly we’re just trying to figure out what the best way to implement this “club” would be. This is all just step 1.
Go for it. Around 1995 I was with a private e-mail group, called the Gurus Club, with about 20 people at its peak. It was a great group with great ideas. The group then decided to have annual meetings and people actually met and discussed things in an informal workshop setting. Not sure though if I would have the time this time around, but urge you to try it.
^^ Random nobodies? What makes you so special dude?
Selection wasn’t random. There was a large internet discussion forum that discussed stocks and people started nominating good posters. Nothig too genius, but the selection was fairly good.