1. The first step is to familiarize yourself with the industry. How many of us jump into investments in industries we know nothing about? It's an interesting educational process to learn about an industry by making an investment in it, but we need to recognize that's what we are doing. That's far different from making a good decision about whether an investment will provide us with a good monetary return. Tomorrow I'll provide a post on the types of macroenvironmental forces you should be aware of when you are considering a new industry.
   
2. The second step is to familiarize yourself with the business. Not only do we not understand an industry, many of us invest in businesses which we really don't know anything about. At a minimum a look at a new company should include a trip to their website and a review of the description of their business. We'll talk about things to look for there in upcoming days.
   

Make sure your investment club doesn't jump into analyzing financial data or projected returns before going through these two steps. Otherwise you are trying to interpret it without a frame of reference.

I just found that club_cafe has been sending messages to my backup e-mail address as well as my primary address. How may I stop the second copy.

Mike Jones

Wall$treet Wannabees