Profile Preview :: Michael Ervin, The Treasurer of Treasurer's Assistant

Continuing on down the list, Michael Ervin aka "Merv" makes his blog debut as LSCM's Treasurer Assistant.  He is sometimes referred to as Assistant to the Treasurer and absolutely loves working closely with his dear friend and Treasurer, Kyle.  Jumping back a number of years Merv attended the Bloomington public school system that.. prepared... him... for... college... While many of us have our varying views of Bloomington, Merv looks back quite fondly and remembers days on the playground of 2nd and 3rd grade where he once called fellow LSCM member (and VP) Pete Anderson his bff.  Graduating from Jefferson High School and then continuing his education at Bethel University, Merv graduated in 2009 with a degree in Business Finance and Poly Sci.

Over the years, Merv has held such coveted positions like Cub Foods Maintenance Boy, Minnesota Valley Country Club Lawn Boy, and Northwest Airlines Bag Boy.  Consideration has been set in motion to change his title to Treasurer Assistant Boy.  A financial intern position was held at UBS and a Legislative Aide position at the Minnesota House of Representatives is also under his work belt.  Currently he resides as an internal auditor at United Health Group where sitting at a desk with limited motion plagues both himself and the rest of us.

Merv was one of the few to bring some real life investing experience which took place during his stint as a bag boy.  Upon receiving 120 shares of Delta Airline stock (during the merge) priced at $11, frustration, bewilderment and a bad lunch brought along his sell out at $9.  Investment in Microsoft was his next move (at $24 a share) and again after much frustration, bewilderment and a bad breakfast burrito the shares were sold at a loss at $22 a share.  Here's to learning from our mistakes!

Besides making new friends and maintaining old ones, Merv wanted to join an investment club to keep his mind focused on investing as well as leveraging other people's ideas, opinions, and strategies and then turning them into profitable investments.  As his friendships and the club continue to grow, five years down Merv hopes for solid returns on investments and continually obtaining vast knowledge on making good investments.  Ten years down he hopes for the capital earned to be turned around and invested into a business and a dream of his (and he hopes of the club as well); outdoor batting cages. 

Bethel Professor Chuck Hannema has been an influence on Merv's investing strategies as well as David Browns, "All About Stock Market Strategies," and his Grandpa.  His Grandpa's investments lie outside of the stock market which he believes to be "driven too much by emotion and intangibles" and not having enough real value.  Instead, he owns a car wash, strip malls and has partial stake in a Texan Jack-In-The-Box.  Owning tangible assets or land and then offering a product or service are investment strategies shared by both Merv and his Grandpa.

Merv likes to fill his free time with biking, softball, golf and hockey.  One of his personal accomplishments is visiting 24 of the 30 MLB team stadiums and has plans to visit both San Fran and Oakland this year.  Other parts of his free time are spent listening to country music, reading Shane Claiborne books, and eating at the outrageously delicious food graced by the gods known as Chipotle.  Also, Inception tops the chart of his movies selection.

If Merv's interests and investing strategies were to be aligned and say, he were to find himself owning a baseball field, he would call it LSCM Field (which I must admit is a superb name) and would feature Carl Crawford, Hanley Ramierez, Ryan Braun, and Albert Pujols topping the batting order.

Looks like we'll have to keep you around for a while Merv.  Chances your Grandpa is an angel investor?

Cheers

Meeting 2/23 Recap

Greetings,

We had a great meeting Wednesday night and Geoff was most accommodating. We started off collecting February's dues and then started presenting what our current stocks have been doing and what we thought we should do with them. Matt, Bast, Jay, Bob, Gieff and Pete all presented their stocks. Bob recommended we could hold for now or sell our VWO which has dropped ~6%; I recommended purchasing more of the Q's; Gieff recommended holding onto PYZ and Pete suggesting holding IJR for now, but we could also sell for more investment options.

After going over some current events,it all boiled down to Rolo's suggestion of buying oil. Next on the agenda was new investment options; the following stocks were discussed: PXE (Merv), CBI (Tim), ODC (Rolo), and SATC (Ben). Voting then took place on all current and future stocks with the following outcomes:
Hold -> DOW, IYF, QQQQ, IJR
Sell -> VWO (10 shares)
Buy -> ODC (16 shares), CBI (8 shares), and BP (12 shares)
Pass -> PXE and SATC

After voting Merv's stock game was discussed and many of you have seen the email with that already. The proposed idea was $10 a person with the game starting this Monday the 28th. Please reply to that specific email for questions/suggestions/issues you may have.

The Prez would also like to remind us to please only use checks for our monthly payments so proper paper trails can be in check. Look for an agenda from the Prez later and we will be meeting Wednesday, March 9th unless otherwise noted.

Great meeting and we'll see everyone next month!

Cheers

1.5 Months In

We've been trading live now for almost 1.5 months and have learned a lot as well as seen most our securities rise a few percentage points in this short time.

When we initially bought our ETFs we assumed they would continue to rise as the market continues to be bullish.  We purchased them with the intention of slowly developing a diversified stock portfolio and we are continuing to research stocks as well as ETF's as we accumulate monthly dues and sell off the securities.  We bought 2 emerging market ETFs and saw those drop the day after we bought them.  ECH which was our Chilean fund fell 12.12% before we voted at our last meeting to sell it and cut our losses.  There was much debate about and we figured we had to set in place some rules as to how much we would let any security fall before we sold it.  This is what we came up with.

Sale of Falling Security
When any security we purchase falls 8% from it's high price it reaches, at any point of our hold on it, we will sell it immediately to cut our losses.  If it continues to fall we have saved ourselves that much money and can then either wait to repurchase on it's upswing, or put that money in another investment.  Here are some examples of what that means.

We buy 'ABC' at $100 and it falls 8% right away, we sell it.
We buy 'ABC' at $100 and it goes up to $105 then falls 8%, we sell it.

We also talked about how we will decide to sell a security on a gain and we figured that every meeting we would review where each investment is at and vote on whether to accumulate more, hold, or sell off.  We hope that if we did all research on any security we purchase it will continue to rise and we should at least be able to make 8% per investment, but in the cases where we reach that 8% mark and think it will continue to rise, we have the option of holding it.

Deciding to cut losses at 8% will protect us from letting it drop farther than 8 which will allow us to put our money into other forms of investments.

Here is our current unrealized gains on our securities:

We have made a good start but will have around $1000 in cash that is still left to invest and should make decisions next Wednesday on what to do with that.

Check back later for more updates!

Profile Preview :: Kyle Lee, The Treasurer of Treasurer's

Next on the list is Kyle, one of Bethel's football sensations and our beloved Treasurer.  Graduating from Bethel in 2009 with his Bachelor's in Business (emphasis Marketing and Finance), he has quickly arose within the group to his position with the help of his Leadership Minor.  His normal life is filled with work where he thoroughly enjoys every waking minute of being at the Department of Veteran's Affairs in the Loan Guarantee Division with his more than perfect boss' (eat that snippy goggle-searching overheads!).  Before that he was a long time employer of Best "The Ocho" Buy, the original megastore.  Outside of work his time is spent playing guitar, hanging out with friends and is always down for any type of a pickup game.  His appreciation for creativity is being newly displayed in his growing passion for photography.

Like a number of us fellow LSCM member's, Kyle had a fairly limited knowledge of investing.  He's managed some of his own stocks (through his parents) well enough to have them reset in money market funds and has gained what knowledge he could from it.  The idea of an investment club offered the perfect, low-risk opportunity gain further understanding and to learn about investing.  As the markets are in the midst of a big up swing, it made the most sense to him to get money in now and as often as possible.  Even if we don't find that next Apple stock, the overall growth of the club will allow for Kyle and the rest of the members to reap the benefits.  Major growth should be imminent as the growth of the fund and knowledge of the market surges through each and every LSCM member.  While he's talked in depth with financial planners, learned as much as possible a number of analyst opinions, Kyle doesn't have any significant influence on his fresh palette of an investment style.  If i were to force Kyle to choose an influence (I didn't) it'd be the Bethel Professor, Chuck Hannema, aka the eighth wonder of the world.

Five years to the future Kyle hopes that member dividends will be paid out while in the middle of significant growth.  With proper management, the club will be able to kick back "play money" for its members as an additional stream of assets available.  Further down the road, a full set of assets for LSCM members would be available to develop business deals as well as real estate acquisition.  "It can function as a means to an end... aka the lifestyle we all dream of."  Here's hoping!  With the initial LSCM funds serving as the catalyst to a larger means of financial growth and stability via the diversifying of the investment portfolio beyond the traditional market, Kyle personally hopes and dreams for consistent growth with enough monthly inflow to diversify outside of the stock market into unnamed business ventures.  Perhaps one of them could be a theme park Kyle?  

Before getting into that, when asked what was the best about being the Treasurer he responded "secretly having to do nothing."  While this is somewhat of an overstatement, this does make some sense since we are using a finely put together, beyond excellent investment tool such as Ameritrade (helloooo endorsements!).  With the brute calculation taken care of, all that's left is to interpret and communicate the results which only presents difficulty when certain members are present ;)

Kyle's favorites include eating prime rib, shrimp, and special k bars, listening to Keith Urban, and the book that changed his life is Everyone Poops.  Favorite movies include Inception, Memento, Shawshank Redemption, Road to Perdition, and the mini-series Band of Brothers.  If Kyle were to invest in a theme park it would be titled, "Hains World."  Those of you that were around for the Heritage 211 days will be familiar with this reference (and those of you that are not can visit here for a rambunctious look into a group of college students in their senior year).  Most popular ride at Hains World?  The Rogne.  'Nuff said. 

Cheers!

IYF Completes the Portfolio

We purchased IYF (iShares Dow Jones US Financial Sector Index Fund) at the end of last week to complete our ETF Portfolio.  We purchased 8 shares at $57.96/share.  Currently the share has jumped 1.93% this week and is helping to offset the loss we are currently taking on the Chilean ETF.

Overall since we have started purchasing stocks, our portfolio is up just a tick mostly driven by today's strong opening.  Look back soon for more updates.

Latest Purchases

ManCave

We met again last night in the propane filled mancave with an agenda to complete our portfolio of ETF's.  The President was running a little late, literally he was huffing and puffing down a soccer field, so the VP, Pete Anderson took reigns last night.  After the usual "shooting the breeze" we discussed how our only purchase at the time was doing, the DIA, made a solid $11.39 yesterday, or to break it down, $1.03 per person.  Not bad in my opinion.

Once we got after it  we talked about a number of different ETF's that each memeber of the group researched.  Here are the 5 stocks we purchased:

PowerShares ETF Trust (PYZ): This ETF follows the Dynamic Basic Materials Sector Intellidex index.
PowerShares QQQ Trust Series1 (QQQQ):  Follows the largest tech companies in the US marketplace.
iShares S&P Small Cap  600 Index Fund (IJR):  Follows S&P Small Cap 600 Index. 
iShares MSCI Chile Investable Market Index Fund (ECH): Broad based market performance in Chile.
Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF (VWO): 748 common stocks of companies located in emerging markets.

We currently still have 12% of our money to invest and are waiting for a check to clear before we can purchase that last ETF.  Hopefully we will have an update tomorrow.

LSCM

The Money Is In

Finally after waiting nearly 55 hours from the time Klein Bank and Ameritrade were setup to be linked together LSCM's first purchase was made this evening at roughly 9:10PM.

First Purchase: 17 shares of DIA (Dow Jones ETF) at $116.64 per share.

Will update post meeting tomorrow on what the next purchases will be.

LSCM