Club of the Month: March 2002

Canuck Cluks

BACK: Mary, Jackie, Leanne, Dorothy
FRONT: Irene, Brenda, Patty, Barb, Miriam
(not shown: Cyndi)

CHICKS: When did you start your club?
CANUCK CLUCKS: Our club was hatched in June 2001 with 5 chicks. By August 2001, at our next face to face, the flock had grown to 10.

What prompted you to start a club?
Patty and Mary are sisters and felt a need to make some good financial decisions for the future. Patty got a signed copy of the Chicks book and recommended Mary read it. They told two friends, who told two friends, and so on and so on. The rest is history.

Where are you all located?
Eight of us have nests in Calgary and area and two roost in Medicine Hat, 300 kilometers east of Calgary.

How do you meet? Online, or face to face?
We meet 9 times a year, 6 on-line and 3 face to face. By far our f2f (or beak to beak) meetings are our favorites. Some of us are just getting to know each other and we find b2b meetings allow us to have fun, learn from each other and get to know each other a bit better.

How did you come up with your name?
We had several good names to choose from. We liked the chicken correlation and wanted somehow to be identified as Canadian so "Canuck Clucks" won!

Tell us about your portfolio.
Our first buy came right after the September 11th terrorist attack and for a nano-second (or a poultry pause) there was talk of holding off on our buy. Then we realized we too could support the economy and defeat the terrorists by simply carrying on as usual. We bought Coke and then Pfizer. Our next purchase will be WestJet, a Canadian airline. Coke and Pfizer are fluctuating right around our purchase price. We felt it was very important to buy Canadian this time because of the terrible exchange rate on the Canadian dollar (if the Canadian dollar gains against the American dollar we'll lose money on our portfolio even if our stocks show a modest gain).

What has been the greatest benefit of being together as a club?
The greatest benefit of the club has been the learning from each other and gaining confidence in what we know. We'll bump into a fellow cluck and find ourselves discussing Net Margins or Increasing Growth and then stop, look at each other, shake our heads and laugh ... amazed that we actually KNOW what we're talking about!

What's been your greatest challenge?
I think our greatest challenge has been our on-line meetings. We don't all know each other and find it hard to discuss big things on-line. One of the things we've done to help that is to make our buy meetings also our face-to-face meetings.

Any good club stories to tell?
We held our first meeting in a motel room. After we were done discussing our business the five of us went out to sit in the hot tub. We were the only ones there for about 10 minutes when a man just walked right in and sat in the middle of us all.

At our latest f2f, the menu was.... egg salad sandwiches and homemade chicken soup.

Any advice for new clubs?
There's a lot to learn; be patient and don't expect results overnight.