Despite Frigid Temperatures, Winter Season is Perfect Time to Form or Improve Your Investment Club
By Anthony Rhodes
To the average individual, our
winters are broken up into two separate categories. There is of course, the
period before the New Year, where we primarily focus on Thanksgiving
shopping and Christmas gift giving, and then there’s the period after
the New Year, where aside from a handful of great football games, is pretty
much a time of proverbial clock watching and mundane repetition, as we
agonizingly wait for the changing of the season. But before you concede to the
familiar trappings of the Post Holiday Blues, allow me to propose an
alternative to these purported bleak and uninteresting months of our lives.
Dare I say a change of perception, which in an ironic twist to seasonal
harvesting rules, provides an opportunity to plant the seeds of growth, during
these barren and unproductive months of the winter season.
If you are a member of an
investment club, listen up. And to those of you who have been pondering the
formation of your own club, this information may be of particular importance to
you, as well. This week, we’ll discuss some strategies to help get your club
off to a rip roaring success in the first quarter, and believe it or not, these
boring, final months of the winter season, may be the best time of the year in
which to do so.
Diagnosis: Cabin Fever
As I mentioned earlier, after
the New Year, most people essentially retire to the warmth and comfort of their
homes, leaving only to perform the basic necessities of reporting to work and
grocery shopping. This truth is due in large part to the fact that there’s
usually nothing else social to do during this period; Midwestern winters are
brutal, and most of us would rather wait until the springtime to begin the
formation of any or all of our group activities. But you see, this is exactly
why starting your investment club in this environment is a good idea! Human
beings are social creatures, and even during the brutality of winter, are far
more likely to attend a group gathering of likeminded individuals, than to
acquiesce to the doldrums of cabin fever. Take this opportunity to lay the
foundation for a monthly, fun filled get-together amongst friends, which
happens to include the monitoring of your investment portfolio. This way,
you’ll ensure that during the coming inevitabilities of a poor performing stock
market and a warmer climate, the interest in your club will remain strong and
steadfast, regardless of these or any other potential distractions.
Diagnosis: Monotony
Over the next few months, this
sequence of events is going to become painfully familiar to most of you reading
this post: wake up, go to work, come home, go to sleep, repeat. And for excitement, you may throw in
an occasional trip to the gas station or supermarket…just to remind yourself
that you’re still alive. Well, such is the life of a hardy Midwesterner during
the monotony of winter. And most of us have come to expect this pattern as a
rite of passage for choosing to live in such a distinguished part of the
country. However, since you’re not the only one to share in this succession of
repetitions, why not incorporate a cycle of activities to ward off this
hobgoblin amongst your club members? Perhaps inviting an investment
professional to your next meeting to discuss different allocation strategies,
or an attorney to address potential estate planning ramifications. These
monotonous final months of the winter season are enough to test the resolve of
many a successful investment club. So preparing yours to cope with their
tediousness could be the difference between long-term success or failure.
As we welcome in the New Year,
we should do so with a preparedness that sets the tone for a period full of
high expectations and endless possibilities. The most momentous successes of
the year are often times determined by how well we plan for them during the
first quarter. So let’s begin this year, and all subsequent New Years with a
new purpose in mind: planning for success early on, implementing strategies to
ensure their completion, and not yielding to the temptations of the Post
Holiday Blues. Happy New Year, folks!
(Anthony Rhodes is the President and owner of wealth management firm The Planning Perspective www.theplanningperspective.com. Do not reproduce without permission.)
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