Victoria Contrarian Investing Club Launch

Starting in January 2009, I'm putting together a email list of interested investors of all knowledge levels who have a value bent. The idea is that about once a month one of us will present an investment idea in detail to the others via email. About twice a year we can get together in person for wine, appies and either a guest speaker or a presentation from one of the members, mostly for fun.

I'm going to analyze Fortress Paper Ltd. FTP.TO as the first project. I'm trying to establish a format that will be easy to understand for members of all levels. I'm guessing that most of us will be caught up to the others within a few months. Questions about the terminology etc. will be encouraged.

There are many different approaches to value investing i.e. deep value, distressed company investing, GARP, risk arbitrage etc etc so I don't care what you like-- just teach us! Hot stocks with premium valuations and/or junior mining ventures with no earnings probably won't go over too well, though.

After you do your first one, you'll see how much work it is to do a full analysis. Nothing comes easy in this world and investing is no different.

The main point of each presented idea is to increase our level of knowledge and not necessarily as a prompt to invest with real money. That's your decision, of course. I will track all the securities presented and present their performance once a year.

I've tried to get a listserv set up but am experience "technical difficulties", so for the short term anyway, we'll just email the list by hitting "reply all". If interest grows, I'll figure something much better out.

I'll continue to blog and include gems from all over the internet here, of course.

Anybody interested in joining (even if you don't live in Victoria) please email me at lporayko@gmail.com. I'll add your name to the mailing list.

Those of you who want an invaluable resource to read about value investing (second only to "The Intelligent Investor" by Ben Graham) please open yourself a gmail account. I have a very large file to send you that will be your investing bible.

l