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The purpose of this document is to capture the ideas for improving our IBD Meetup meetings. These ideas were generated at the IBD Rejuvenation meeting at Boston
College on March 19, 2009. The meeting was facilitated by Doug Roberts and Jeff
Orrik. These notes are not intended to be minutes. The ideas are in the order generated during the meeting.
Is there some way to service the silent members of IBD Meetup (Doug)?
The Boston IBD Meetup group is the second largest group in the country but the only group that has more than one meeting per month (Doug).
The IBD Meetup in Naperville, IL, is focused strictly on the IBD investing methodology and uses level 4 trained people as speakers (Doug).
Harlan’s weekly market update is “just the kind of content that we like (Doug).
Ming is building a Web site where he wants people to post charts and their technical analysis comments about these charts. This format would be a Web forum (Ming).
It would be helpful to tell everyone about the various IBD meetings that we hold every month by listing these meetings on the front page of IBD Meetup (originator unknown).
How about having a mission statement (Harlan)?
There is a concern about lack of follow-up, specifically at it relates to stock picks and other investment (eg: ETFs, commodities) picks in our meetings. We do not have a rigorous way of tracking how our picks perform. Alea had some specific suggestions
(some also contributed by others during the conversation):
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The process of tracking stock picks could be virtual.
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We could have 5 or 6 portfolios running at the same time.
 Keith currently puts the IBD Meetup group’s stock picks into a spreadsheet but this spreadsheet doesn’t specify entries and exits.
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If appropriate and useful, the investment picks group could be a sib-group, similar to the IBD Methods group or the Value Investing group.
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This idea needs a sponsor and Alea is interested in becoming one.
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For every stock that is picked, there should be a target and a stop loss (Herb).
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We have been asking for people to specify the method (eg: IBD, value, technical) that the individual picker has used to select the stock (Doug).
Give people some time at the 15 minute break to champion an idea that they want to sponsor, and use that time to solicit other people’s help (Tom).
Prepared by Mike Kinkead 3.21.09 Boston IBD Meetup Rejuvenation Mtg

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Use a structured profile to gather backgrounds on everyone to be posted on our Google
Groups site or in Ming’s Web forum or both. Members could use this information to find like-minded people to work together on a sub-group. We could also use these profiles to find potential speakers about a topic in one of our monthly meetings (Mike).
Take time during our meetings to ask people to flesh out certain topics of interest and to prepare a talk about these topics.
We cold call this “Volunteer Opportunity Time”
(Hank).
Prepare a talk on trading psychology. Hank volunteered to do so (Hank).
Use the Chuck Dukas (sp?) approach when mentioning a stock (Herb):
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What is your methodology?
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What is your plan?
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How do you execute your plan?
Take meeting time to have individuals spend 5 minutes on one of their winning trades and 5 minutes on one of their trades that went against them. Have the individual explain methodology, entry and exit plan and what happened when the plan was executed
. Borrow Eric’s format (what is this?) to bring a consistent structure to the talk
(Mike and Tom).
Meeting philosophy: the IBD Meetup doesn’t do seminars where all of the i’s and t’s are dotted and crossed. We do adult education we design talks that speak to the more advanced members of the group (Doug).
We could do Webinars to access more members of the group. As an example, Harlan could do his weekly market update in the form of a Webinar rather than just a post on
Google Groups (Doug).
We should try a sub-group meeting that is focused on independent financial research.
The group members would bring data, software and analysis to the table. This group would act as triage group. Someone would bring in a problem that needs a solution, and the group helps to solve the problem (Doug).
Herb mentioned that he was working on an independent financial research project.
Specifically, he willing to take his trading tools that he has built into TradeStation and put them into thinkorswim and Fidelity (Herb).
The suggestion was made to include Webinars into our meeting mix because “people like Webinars” (Bob Podd).
A meeting procedural suggestion: when speakers talk, have them keep an eye out for people with their hands up. Too often, people ask questions or make comments without raising their hands, and the more silent people do not get air time. (David).
Prepared by Mike Kinkead 3.21.09 Boston IBD Meetup Rejuvenation Mtg

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Martha Werman was unable to attend but she sent Mike a list of suggestions repeated below:
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Have topics to help people learn about the basic relationships between: (1) FX, oil and the dollar; (2) the dollar and gold; (3) commodities and China; and (4) shipping and commodities, to name a few. These are relationships that the more experienced traders seem to know that are basic to the ups and downs of trading.
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Spend more time understanding other countries (eg: Brazil) and expanding our perspective to a more global outlook.
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Run a discussion around a timely article in the press (eg: a Fed action).
Distribute the article at the beginning of the meeting, give people 5 minutes of quiet time to read it, and then discuss is as a group.
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Compile a list of particularly useful investing information resources and references online, and post it on Google Groups.
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Martha has a list of books that she is certainly willing to reprint for the group.
There are certainly some good ideas that came out of the meeting. The next step is to share these with the larger group, and ask for people to volunteer to sponsor some of these ideas and make them happen! It is unfair to have Doug and Jeff do all of the work to make IBD Meetup meetings a success!
Prepared by Mike Kinkead 3.21.09 Boston IBD Meetup Rejuvenation Mtg