Taking stock
in their future
Investment clubs in Hawaii
By Russ Lynch
are part of a growing trend
across the country
Star-BulletinDWIGHT Melton, a Marine Corps aviation-supply master sergeant living in Ewa Beach, gathers his family together one evening a month to take a hard look at the stock market and plot investment strategies.
The children, daughter Tiffany 17, a Pearl City High School student, and son J.R., 12, who goes to Ilima Intermediate School, put 10 percent of their allowance into the investment pool.
Wife Lori contributes too and the family has hourlong formal meetings to decide their investment strategy.
The Meltons are among dozens of groups in Hawaii that have formed investment clubs, a low-cost, nationally supported way of making investment decisions.
The clubs are hoping to recruit others in their nonprofit organization in a two-day Investment Fair to be held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in mid-November.
For Melton, the process has been one of education. "I wanted a way of getting these guys into it," he said of his children, and he found forming a club and setting up a formal procedure was a good way to interest them in investing for their future.
EDUCATION FORUM
What: 1999 Investors Fair
"We go through the actual portfolios, look at the stock selection possibilities. We look at the economic environment," he said. In the process the family, which does its trading through discount brokerage Waterhouse Securities Inc., has built up a six-figure portfolio.
Education is the main thrust of this year's Investors Fair, which starts Nov. 12 with afternoon seminar sessions on such subjects as how to read an annual report, where to get financial information on companies and investment funds, how to understand economic reports and, of course, how to start an investment club.
There are about 90 investment clubs in Hawaii with a total of about 1,400 members, so the average size is only about 18 members and many, like the Meltons' group, are considerably smaller than that. They are affiliated with the Aloha Hawaii Council of the National Association of Investors Corp., a nonprofit organization that has been providing investment education for individuals and clubs since 1951.
There's an all-women club called Wiki Kala ("fast money" in Hawaiian) that has been together for 30 years and still meets regularly and another called Celluloid Sisters, a group of women who were all, at some time in their lives, involved in the entertainment industry.
There are clubs of firemen and other professions, others just made up of friends. They socialize and make their investment decisions at regular meetings, usually putting a set amount, such as $50 a month, into a common investment pot.
Ryan Muraoka, a spokesman for the local NAIC organization who started an investment club in 1994 called MIT, for Millionaires in Training, said the sessions are not just about where to invest.
Muraoka said students are welcome. There is a lot to be learned, built around the organization's basic message that smart investors can provide for themselves and their families quite nicely.
"If parents don't want to come for themselves, they should come for their kids," to learn how to take care of their families financially, Muraoka said. "We believe the general public should take control of their future."
The NAIC folks are there to help, not to make money out of the seminars, he said. "We're a nonprofit investment education organization. We're all volunteers. None of us are paid."
Patt Emminger, a Makiki Heights resident who has a club called Profit Oriented Investors (POI), said the Nov. 12 afternoon panels will include sessions for beginner, medium-level and experienced investors.
Next year, she said, the local NAIC chapter will try to work more with schools, explaining how students can use the club approach to get into investing with a minimal initial expense and how they can develop market savvy.
The keynote speaker at lunchtime on Saturday, Nov. 13 will be Charles B. Carlson, author, portfolio manager and the investment expert who has been credited with coining the phrase "no-load stocks." Carlson will talk on "The Promise and Perils of the Internet" and also provide a list of investment ideas that he thinks work.
That day's session will include a presentation by Doug Gerlach, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Online Investing" and a guide to investing through the Internet. He is an NAIC director and a pioneer in using the Internet to teach people how to invest in the stock market.
Other speakers that day will include Hawaii aquaculture experts Mark Huntley, chairman and chief executive officer of Aquasearch Inc.; and Gerald Cysewski, president and CEO of Cyanotech Corp.; John Garibaldi, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Hawaiian Airlines Inc.
Mainland executives on the agenda are Sandy Upperman and Donald Eagon of Diebold Inc., Glenn Gagnon of Golden Triangle Industries Inc., Gregory Wilson of Mity-Lite Inc. and Patrick Reynolds of Synovus Financial Corp.
Representatives of other publicly held companies will be on hand at exhibition display booths to answer questions from the investing public.
Local companies taking part include Alexander & Baldwin Inc., Hawaiian Electric Industries Inc. and Pacific Century Financial Corp.
