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SAR's investing sisters doing it for themselves

Anyone popping in to the Helena Mae centre on a Monday would not be surprised to find a well-dressed group of women talking over lunch. In fact, this particular group gathers here once a month. They discuss life and work, their children, car insurance and the family pet. And as with many Hong Kong gatherings, if you hang around long enough, the conversation soon turns to the stock market.

Rifle through their handbags on the sly while they chatter over the mushroom risotto and you will find more than lipstick, hand cream and a photo of the family holiday. These women mean business. They come armed with spreadsheets, stock graphs and hot tips.

This is the monthly investment meeting of the Hong Kong Investors, a women-only institution made up of all nationalities, that has been in existence since 1984. President Klare Asker is the group's longest serving member, having been part of the club since 1996. As with most of the 15 members of all ages and descriptions, she does not have a background in finance, although she worked in a bank in England years ago.

'Working in a bank and being an investor is a totally different experience,' she admits. 'You have to be very clear about your long-term and short-term strategies.'

Members contribute HK$800 a month to the coffers, with a three-month contribution at the outset. The money is put into China and Hong Kong stocks, with HK$2,000 a month invested in an index fund.

Hong Kong Investors is run by an annually elected committee. A management team of four runs the investments, joined on a monthly rotation by other members of the club.

A key part of the club's activities is the speaker meeting, an educational experience held once a month. Past speakers have included David Webb, now editor of Webb-site.com, and K.L. Law, who writes The Private Investor column for Sunday Money.

'Our speakers teach us certain ways of reading the message in the media,' says one member. 'At least now I can look at a newspaper and know what it means. You can do your own research.'

The club has learned the hard way the importance of their own educated decisions. Making profits in a bull market is easy - when things turn bearish it is a different story.

'We made money up to 1997,' says Ms Asker. 'In 1998, we started going down. Back then nobody knew what was going on. When I joined the club, the investment was in profit 20 per cent. Nobody needed to do anything. Anything we bought was good. It was all: 'Oh, I heard about this one, and shall we buy this one?' It was no problem. In 1998, it hit us for the first time that we couldn't just go around and say: 'Oh, we like this one, let's buy it'. We started looking deeper into the companies.'

For the past 10 months, Hong Kong Investors has roughly tracked the Hang Seng Index, which is down about 30 per cent this year and remains one of the region's worst-performing stock markets. But members remain stoic in the face of diminishing returns.

'You have to put in time and research to come up ahead in buying stocks,' says one woman, a home-maker who has belonged to the club for more than two years. 'You cannot just go by one person's opinion.'

'We have made the mistake in the past when we had speakers come in, and obviously they all have their favourite stocks, so we went out and bought them. Of course, in some cases we lost money,' says Ms Asker. 'I don't think there has ever been any recommendation on which we have made money unless we have researched it ourselves.

'If you buy a stock and you don't even know what a company is doing, that is really dangerous, that is gambling. If you don't understand gambling, you shouldn't do it,' she adds.

The markets were already on a downward path before the shocking events of September 11, sounding a wake-up call for the club and underlining the importance of being critical and enduring bumps in the road. Stints spent on the management team, which entails daily tracking of sectors and specific counters, is where the women say they learn their most valuable lessons.

The group's overall investment is about HK$300,000. The women have a long-standing relationship with a brokerage company in Central, which does not object to their relatively small stock purchases of about HK$25,000 at a time.

'We are able to meet in [the brokerage] offices and use some of their facilities so that we have an up-to-date screen and work through our portfolio,' Ms Asker says.

Annual gains are poured back into the club unless members choose to take some profits, although the account must be kept at a certain level. Those leaving must also be refunded.

'At the moment I don't think anybody wishes to take money out because we are not making profits right now,' says Ms Asker. 'Most people think of this as education rather than investing money.'

At the end of the day, for the Hong Kong Investors the bottom line is getting together and enjoying their mutual learning curve. The more they understand about the markets, the greater their investing enjoyment.

Making money is incidental, although they adhere to the market mantra that what goes down must, eventually, go up.

Those interested in joining the club can e-mail [email protected].

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