Top investment professionals speak at new Investment club

There’s a new club creating quite a pulse in room 327. During AR and continuing until 3:30 p.m., there are brilliant minds ready to make some dough. LM’s fresh and exciting Investment club helps its members apply real-world knowledge to investing and can even help enhance members’ stock portfolios for the years to come.

William Rieke ’16, President of the Investment Club, came up with the idea after his cousins brought an investment club to their own school. Because of his cousins’ success, Rieke looked into starting something similar at LM. Since he is interested in the stock market himself and enjoys learning about the way the economy works, Rieke figured that LM could use a club for people like him. LM’s new Investment Club is a discussion-based club where one can learn the “ins” and “outs” of the market, and how to invest with real money.

“There is no online game in our club, and the ultimate goal is for everyone involved to become confident in their investing skills,” says Rieke. “To teach investment skills, we have financial and investment experts come in and present to our members.”

Not just any investors, but investors from Boenning and Scattergood, the largest brokerage firm in Philadelphia, visit the club. Rachel Perlman, the Senior Vice President Fixed Income Sales at Boenning will be coming to speak on March 25. With expert investors coming in to present, Rieke hopes that the nuances and the terminology of finance and investing can be made clearer and more user friendly to members. He believes that Investment club “is a great place to start, because almost everyone is a beginner, and we all learn together.”

Expounding more upon the goings-on at the Investment Club, Rieke says that, usually, the meetings feature a professional investor in a particular field. The club’s last meeting featured Tower Bridge Advisors, who came in to teach the group’s members on how to analyze a particular stock. Rieke says his goal is to have his members become comfortable enough to put their money in the stock market rather than the bank.

“Since 1900, the annual return on the total market index (compilation of all stocks, percentage in fund based on market cap) is nine per cent and the bank is only one per cent. That is the difference between becoming a multi millionaire and not having enough money to retire."

Nevertheless, Rieke did disclose the multitude of risks with putting your money in the market, rather than a bank.

Now, that the club has started, it is looking for new members. Rieke says that the club has been very popular juniors, but had not gained a whole lot of attention with the other classes. When asked if AP Economics was a necessary course to have taken before joining the club, Rieke says, “AP Econ is helpful to take but by no means necessary.” He goes even further to say that most of the club’s members have not actually taken the course.

Since Rieke is greatly interested in the stock market, learning from actual investing experts and running the Investment Club, I asked him about some of the companies that are on the rise and worth investing. Rieke said that he is especially bullish on the security sector. He revealed that companies like “Fireye, Cyberark, and Palo Alto Networks” are up and coming. He says, “As cyber-attacks rise in volume so do these companies’ revenues and stock prices.” Business analytics software is another area on which Rieke is bullish. “These guys have great margins and their revenue growth is through the roof.”

No matter what field of work you want to go into, skill and knowledge in investing can be important. We live in the country with the biggest economy in the world. The U.S. has lots of booming sectors, especially in technology, real estate, and in different commodities. If you are looking for the shrewdness to be able to play the market to your advantage, then the Investment Club will provide you insight to do just that.

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