Opportune time to form investment clubs

Dec 25, 2013

As we celebrate Christmas, it''s a good time to think about the challenges that lie ahead both for economic and social emancipation of humankind.

trueBy Paul Muleme

As we celebrate Christmas and go through the festive season where people from all spheres of life come together to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ  and welcome the new year, it’s a big opportune time not only to eat and make merry but also think about the challenges that lie ahead both for economic and social emancipation of humankind on planet Earth.


Jesus was born to make a rebirth of a new world order  that is devoid of sin and save human kind from destruction , we can also think of giving birth to forming investment clubs that aim at improving our social economic welfare.

As families come together either at family levels , tribal , religious , social level , status levels , political affiliations at all these gatherings an idea of forming investment clubs can be disseminated to initiate people to come together based on trust , transparency , commitment , having a shared vision to pool money and ideas  for investment geared towards improving the social economic welfare of members .

An investment club is a group of people less than 100 individuals  who meet to pool their money to make investments . It can also be a small group of individual investors who come together to learn , share investing experiences and help each other become more successful investors.

Clubs provide education, buying power plus confidence of knowing  you don’t have to go it alone  . Investment clubs can also decide not to pool money together  and simply come together to discuss stock ideas , business ideas  for example the previous Saturday while at Buddo at a friends home he threw a small party for friends and  a few relatives celebrating the baptism of his children .

There was eating , drinking , sharing of all forms of talk ranging from religious talk to social talk and to crown it all  when it was time for all of us to go home an opportune time came for all the gathered guests to introduce themselves and share what they do for a living .

Here I managed to share my business experience on how we manage events and at the end of the day I managed to scoop three social events that my company Pauma Productions is to cover of three different people I didn’t know for the year coming.

With the technology age , facebook , twitter and other chart rooms can be turned into investment clubs to share ideas on topics of economic emancipation , seek business , markets for our produce and services . Readers across the board can share thoughts answering questions in chart boards and featured articles .

Companies like coca cola have used this avenue to improve on the quality of their product and seek new markets which has pushed the company to greater heights.

Here Ugandan traders can take a leaf and share information using these chart boards to seek for information from their fellow traders on how they handle their business for example if someone wanted to go to china shared information on topics like transportation costs , tax information ,sourcing of cheap commodities all this adds value to discovering the unknown through chart board investment clubs .

One of the aspects to consider while forming an investment club is the numbers . Its ideal to have a small manageable size of members let say 15 people who have the same aspirations and goals of investment .

Set a time when to meet , put in place a simple organization structure , document your organization , agree on a set of guidelines and rules and if possible when it grows  make it a legal entity for protection purposes as with time it will transform into a wealthy empire .

Some of the international names that have come out investment clubs are brand names like Money makers , Blue chips and salsa , Blooming Asset , Fortune hunters  etc..

In Uganda there are several forms of investment clubs like women income groups , social clubs like golf clubs ,disadavantaged groups have come up together to improve on the social welfare of individuals by pooling money together.

However so many of these lack a proper direction on how to invest the money pooled together, like in women groups members pool money together at weekly or monthly intervals and they receive it at given times in a pool.

But you find that the individual takes the decision to invest alone other than as a collective responsibility to have a bigger investment and others have taken on a good path to invest jointly by purchasing  assets like a rental buildings which can help members realize an income at every end of month .

Here a good example is the Mengo Teachers club that put up a commercial Hall  for events hire which supplements Teachers income.

At the recent Buganda convention held at Hotel Africana it was recommended to form investment clubs at all levels of subunits either at county, parish , village , family and clan  levels to enable members improve on their standard of living .

This will enable the peasantry get an opportunity to market their produce since Buganda has a comparative advantage in agriculture and animal husbandry thus improving their homestead incomes.

Investment clubs are a model that all like minded Ugandans should think  to emulate, they have proved to be  a driving force of development for investment in countries like Thailand with an example of Bangkok Investors club who meet as members and share the vision of wanting money to work hard for them and share knowledge for the like minded members .

Another economic giant is South Korea which has a live experience of an investment club , the Seoul Investment club which is a group of serious investors who meet once a month to share investment insight with each other .

We can form investment clubs at all levels of organization as this will help to transform our economic lives through sharing education and market information that we wouldn’t gain as individuals.

 pmuleme@lycos.com

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