Are Online Investment Clubs a Good Idea?

Investment clubs are quickly gaining in popularity and notoriety as many groups are finding how fun and exciting such clubs can be. For those not in the  know, an investment club is essentially a group of friends or like-minded individuals who meet to invest in various ventures that are decided and voted on by the group. All members pay a fee that is typically charged once a month and they all discuss what field to buy stocks after deliberating over various issues.

The whole deal is a great way to have fun if you are a bored housewife or a risk-taking middle management type. Investment clubs allow everyone to get at least part of a glimpse of the excitement of Wall Street and there is always the very real possibility of riches and fortune.

The famed Beardstown Ladies Investment Club is one of the more popular examples of such a thing and the ladies ended up writing four books detailing the tips and ideas they used while making massive profit. To be fair, the ladies fudged the numbers a bit and the book publisher ended up getting sued but the fact remains that investment clubs truly do have potential. Lately people seem to be noticing more and more online investment clubs that offer the same basic mindset of an investment club without the trouble of meeting at a certain place.

Online investment clubs at first seem like a great idea. When your club is online you can log on anytime and chat with members or post on message boards. It really is a good idea and real investment clubs that don't like the idea of online investment clubs could snuff out the whole affair right now if they simply made their own websites. Unfortunately this won't happen and the idea of online investment groups does seem like a more advanced alternative. You don't have to meet your club at some out of the way joint that is in between everybody's locations. You also don't have to even know your fellow members. It is this last fact, though, that makes many despise the idea of online investment clubs.

With regular clubs you get to know everybody and you kind of can understand the back story as to why they may want to buy shares of X company or sell short on Y corporation. You also can make friends that have the same interests as you. Online investment clubs, on the other hand, take all the fun and personality out of the venture and simply makes you a wanna-be stockbroker chatting and texting other wanna-be stockbrokers whom you know little to nothing about. Where is the fun in all of that? If, however, this sounds like your cup of tea then you may have found the perfect outlet. For the more social among us, though, it is wise to consider a regular investment club before you get roped up into an online one.