The Double Ds investment club is one of the newest additions to the investment club movement, having been up and running for just three months. However, the members have had years of experience of the ups and downs of the markets through their husbands, who are all members of the Duckers and Divers investment club.

The Duckers and Divers may ring a bell with What Investment readers, having been featured in the February issue of this magazine. The Double Ds were born at a Duckers and Divers social gathering in January 2008. Christine Trueman, treasurer of the Double Ds, explains, ‘A group of the wives were saying that they would be interested in starting an investment club for themselves, so we decided to give it a go.’

As she points out, they may be competitive, but the Double Ds strive to keep things in proportion: ‘We are particularly competitive with our husbands, but we don’t get as strung up about it as they do. We take it seriously, but we don’t let it get personal. Nobody throws their toys out of the pram.’

Early success
The club is made up of 15 women and, despite their being new to the business of investing, has already seen an increase in the value of its portfolio. ‘Our goal is to make enough money from our shares to go on holiday, or at least the occasional team night out,’ says Trueman. ‘Much to the chaps’ disgust, our investments have gone up. We definitely don’t share investment knowledge with the men!’

But having husbands who have been members of a long-standing investment club has had its benefits, particularly when the women first ventured out on their own. Trueman admits, ‘When we started off, none of us knew anything about running an investment club. We got a set of legal guidelines from the internet and went with The Share Centre because our husbands’ club is with them and they have always found them extremely helpful.’

Getting started
Despite the group being rather inexperienced, they didn’t hesitate to jump in head-first
and take their chances, even in the current economic climate. Trueman points out, ‘With the market how it is currently, we discussed whether we should invest or just hold tight for now. But we decided, “No, we are a share club, so let’s take our chance.” At the first meeting, everyone had to come up with a proposal for one share, and we picked three of these to begin with: a lower-, medium- and higher-risk investment.’

The higher-risk investment that the Double Ds settled on was online sports betting and gaming group Sportingbet, which has a market cap of £177.67 million and a current share price of 37.75p.

Trueman continues, ‘Our medium-risk share was local company Gooch & Housego, a manufacturer of acousto-optic devices and custom optical components, which is listed on AIM. We thought it would be good to support a local firm that we knew a bit about.

‘The big industrial company Hamworthy Engineering was our lower-risk, long-term investment. It has done well since our original investment, so we have recently increased our shares,’ she adds.

Since those initial investments, the club has continued to pick out stocks based on varied research. ‘We have bought shares in Cerco, because it has a good set of order books. My background is in retail information technology, and in my view the key to a good longer-term investment is if a company has a strong order book,’ enthuses Trueman.

She adds, ‘Our members are coming up with more and more suggestions for future investments that we should be watching out for. We are reading the financial papers and using their suggestions as guidance, and we have also set up tracking of potential future investments on Share.com.’

Basic instinct
When it comes to a strategy, the Double Ds are very much ‘footloose and fancy-free’, basing each investment decision on gut instincts. As Trueman points out, ‘We don’t have a strategy as such. At the beginning of the club, we talked about which markets we were willing to invest in and decided to stay away from penny shares because of their potential for big rises and falls. Currently, it is a case of going on a share-by-share basis and whether we like the sound of a particular investment. As yet, we haven’t decided to focus on a particular sector and are currently just spreading our investments.’

However, the group is wary of bank stocks and is keeping its distance for now. Trueman reports that ‘We have discussed banking shares. However, it is a case of “no thanks” at the moment. We want to cut our teeth on big companies with proven track records.’

Social dimension
Behind the scenes, the Double Ds are very committed to the social side of running an investment club, meeting each month in a local pub in Somerset. ‘Having only been up and running for three months, we are still all very new at this, so it is still very much a social event,’ says Trueman.

But this doesn’t mean the ladies aren’t taking investing seriously, and some have even branched out on their own. ‘It has been a very good experience so far. Some members now have their own portfolios,’ explains Trueman. ‘Personally, I have spotted a few shares and may set up my own portfolio in the future.’

Reflecting on the initial set-up of the club, Trueman is relieved that all the hard work is out of the way: ‘It does feel like the hard work has been done now. Looking back, though, I do think we could have done more research into what is actually involved in running a club, especially the legal side of things.’

However, now all that is out of the way, the ladies can concentrate on making money and perhaps do better than their husbands. ‘We have had a good first three months and have been able to see some gains on our investments. Come back in a year’s time and see how we are doing,’ challenges Trueman.