March 9 was my investment club meeting.  It was also the 1 year anniversary

of the recent extreme low point in the stock market.  At my club meetings we always take a look

at the bivio Performance Benchmark Report to see how our IRR for the recent 1 year

time period is comparing to how we would have done had we invested in the

Vanguard Index 500 fund rather than our club.

Here is a screen capture of what we saw.  We knew last year was a good time

to have been investing but we were very happy when we saw this:

Some of the reason for our success had to do with the fact that when things were

at their worst last March, we kept investing.  Our connection to the expertise in

this community helped us to take action at a very scary time.  I specifically

remember attending a presentation put together by ManifestInvesting which provided

many years of data and graphically displayed how much of an outlier (on the down side), 2008

was.  The point of the presentation was that things should, at a minimum, return to the mean and being

on the extreme low side of the chart meant it was probably a good opportunity to purchase

stocks. 

We all learn most when we actually participate.  We can theorize and discuss but actually

making an investment can be the most difficult obstacle we need to overcome.  Participation

in a club means you have both moral support to make decisions when things are scary and a

lower exposure when some of the inevitable failures that are part of the learning process

occur.  My club activities and learning experiences have increased my confidence level in

dealing with my personal finances immensely.  I wonder whether others of you that have been

members of clubs for a while feel the same way.

    Laurie Frederiksen