Is it better to start your own club or a branch at your school

Answered

Definitely start your own because then you can be the President of the club, bypassing the voting process of the existing club.

My advice to you is to

a.) Differentiate your investment strategy from the other clubs. For instance, if you are female, you can just invest your portfolio in companies run by women. Or if you have strong opinions about companies that in place leading DEI policies so that their hiring and advancement practices promote BIPOC or queer folk or other marginalized groups, then create a portfolio of companies that promote DEI.

b.) Make sure you can attract enough members so that you can own a portfolio of stocks, not just 1 or 2 stocks. So try to get like 50 investors/members. You can tell them that they can be passive investors and say they belong to the club but they don't have to attend all the meetings. At the end of the school year, they can redeem their investment before the summer break.

c.) Have a minimum investment of say $75 per member. That way if you get 50 kids to participate that's $3750 to start with.

d.) Each member can add money to increase their shares in the club at period times like when the group decides to add a company.

e.) Use a trading platform that has low fees like Robin Hood or something like that. And when you have your monthly meeting, you can print out a copy of the portfolio to the members or just create a Club Website where they can log in and look at the . PDF file of the statement.

f.) During the times between monthly status reports, you can have discussions on a portfolio strategy, or discuss individual companies, have guest speakers from parents who might know someone working at these companies.

Good Luck.