May 2, 2007
Just Not A Long Haul Kind of Guy

Ahead of our time.  At least with an investment club.  Recently, the Wall Street Journal detailed a decline in the number of investment groups.  Despite the recent Dow run-up, the club craze has yet to re-kindle.  Unpleasant memories of the dot com bust are still fresh.  No surprise there.  We’re all self styled investment wizards when the market heads skyward, but come the inevitable Dow free fall toward for the dumper and myriad, “I’m in it for the long haul” folks discover the big advantage to a federally insured certificate of deposit is un-interrupted sleep as opposed to lying awake at 3 a.m. wondering if a. the market will ever turn around and b. if not will Wal-Mart be hiring greeters. 

In the midst of the dot com bust, I was a Rockies season ticket holder.  This paralleled a time when Coloradoans tired of paying major league prices to watch minor league baseball at Coors.  Season ticket holders painfully learned Casey Stengel was right, “If people don’t want to go to the ballpark you can’t stop ‘em.” 

Riding Denver’s 16^th street mall bus, I struck up a conversation with an elderly couple.  She saw tickets sticking out of my shirt pocket and inquired, “Going to the game?”  “No” I replied, “Selling my seats.”  “Well” she asked “Don’t you take a loss dealing with a scalper?”  “Absolutely,” said I, “Tonight’s game against the Padres has little interest so maybe they’re worth half price.”  “Oh my” she said looking concerned.  “That must be disappointing.”  “It is” I told her, “The only rationalization is the money could have been in a dot com stock.  That would be even worse.”  “You’re right,” she said as she turned to her husband, “Why didn’t you invest in Rockies tickets?”  A look of pain crossed his face as he looked away. 

Long ago a group of us, Alpha males all, started an investment club.  Each was to research a stock and bring a report to the next meeting.  We were committed to being in the market “for the long haul.”  Three months later research became boring.  Besides, what we really wanted was to get rich quick.  

So our stake was invested, in cocoa futures, with an outfit named Putts and Calls.  We quadrupled the dough in three weeks.  Cash in?  Not us.  We voted to not only re-invest the profits but also add additional money collectively scrounged from family budgets.  Our last contact with Putts and Calls said the contract had tripled. After that it became impossible to track our gains as Putts and Calls had skipped town taking our “solid gold” investment with them. So we did what any group of American males would and gave the investment club to our wives.  They were, big understatement here, not all that enthused. 

All was not lost.  The club, Escalante Investments, had some penny stocks, one of which grew several times over.  In fact, the growth was so healthy over time the wives determined they could sell and take the husbands on a tour of England.  That trip was so successful the ladies ceased investing, continued to collect the monthly dues, and every five years or so, spent the accumulated wad on a couples tour.  Escalante Investments exists to this day.  Never has another investment been made but we’ve wandered Scandinavia, Italy, the Mediterranean and Spain.  The memories will live forever.  And the wives did indeed follow, kind of, the original goal; the part about being in it for the long haul.  Or long hauls, take your pick.