Investment Club Update
It's been a few weeks now and I've made significant progress on getting the club off the ground. My partner in crime - who for the purposes of keeping him anonymous I will call Carl - and I have been working on getting the paperwork ready to go. I contacted the Investors Association of Canada a few weeks ago to order their Investment Club Kit, which contains - apparently - everything you need to know in order to start a club.
The kit proved to be very comprehensive, containing detailed explanations of pretty much every aspect of starting a club, along with sample documents of a partnership agreement, meeting minutes, member information, questionnaires, etc. The only grip I have about the kit is that it's all paper-based. In this day and age, the documents should be provided electronically. I was faced with re-typing in the sample partnership agreement so I could modify it for my own use. Instead I chose (on Carl's suggestion - thank you!) to scan it in and OCR it. I have to say, OCR's come a long way since I last tried using it about 4 years ago. The only repetitive error was that the number "1" kept being replaced with the letter "I" - not a big deal, considering the alternative.
So Carl and I are reviewing our partnership agreement, which is basically the sample, but with some important changes (we're not going to have regular monthly contributions, and our club won't be big enough to warrant having five 3-person committees). The details of the partnership agreement and the "rules" of the club will be worked out once we've taken on the other 3 charter members and we've had our first official meeting.
Now it's time to start looking at discount brokers for our use. I've looked at a few online brokers now, and I'm having trouble finding one that supports investment clubs; at least, none of them talk about it on their sites. I'm waiting to hear back from a couple that I've emailed for more information.
I'll write more when we've made more progress. I can't believe just how much work it is to get one of these things going, and we haven't even started looking at investments yet! I'm sure it will all be worth it. If nothing else, I'm learning a lot about starting a partnership in Canada.
CNEWS Law & Order - Teens accused in beating death released on bail
The judge who ordered the two teens accused of beating Jomar Lanot to death released on bail was apparently on the verge of tears as she described her reasons. Unfortunately, the article does not make clear just what she was crying about - releasing them on bail, or just general sadness about the death of Lamot.
CNEWS Law & Order - Teens accused in beating death released on bailRegardless, though, it's completely inappropriate for a judge to be displaying these kinds of emotions in court. Our judiciary is supposed to be impartial, and these emotions betray sympathy with one or the other (or both) of the parties involved.
On another point, her reasons for releasing the two accused on bail were explained by her statement that our outrage at the act "must be tempered by the accused's presumption of innocence". Well duh! Our entire judicial system is based on a presumption of innocence. Every person every accused of any crime is assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. That doesn't mean, however, that we let every accused person walk free on bail during the hearings and trial.
This decision has to be "tempered" with the nature of the crime. And to me, a bunch of boys chasing down, catching, and beating the crap out of another boy just because he happened to be walking by (I won't get into the allegations of racist motivations) - well, that's pretty heinous. I don't want these kids anywhere on the street if they've been accused of this crime. And don't try to tell me that their house arrest will be sufficient. The "designated adults" who have to supervise them 24/7 are their parents - does anyone really believe the parents will be as strict on them as they should be? They obviously weren't so in the first place.
The straight goods?
I'm no fan of Dalton McGuinty, as I've said several times in this blog. He's an old-school politician pretending to be something different, a buffoon, and a liar. But I didn't expect him to pull something quite this stupid out of hit hat. He felt snubbed because he didn't get to ring the opening bell for the NYSE today; instead, the premier of China rang it. Read more on
CANOE.
So in response, he a) claims he was originally supposed to ring the bell, when he never was, b) pulls some facts out of his ass to claim that Ontario is a bigger trading partner of the US' than either China or Mexico, and c) makes a big deal out of the situation instead of handling it diplomatically. And after his errors are pointed out to him, he has the temerity to have his aides state that he never felt slighted in the first place.
What happened to your claim of being honest and open with the people of Ontario, Dalton? Where are the "straight goods" now? Admit you fucked up, apologize to Americans, Ontarians and the good people at the NYSE and move on.
Management by Baseball
I came across this blog today, called
Management by Baseball, written by Jeff Angus. Seems like a very interesting series of readings about the relationship between management and baseball and what managers can learn from the (American) national pastime. His latest entry teases us with mention of a test for "Leadership", although he says one doesn't exist (understandable).
I've been thinking about this a little bit recently, given that it's about time I start looking for a job again. I want to go work for another startup, but I don't want to make the same mistakes I made at the last one (duh). I want to find a startup that is led by a competent, driven, hard-working, "visionary" leader. But how do you find one of these? The only thing I can think of is this: a good leader has good followers.
Yes, I know it sounds trite, but it seems to be the only way that I can think of really determining if a senior manager is a good leader: meet his/her underlings and evaluate them. It's easy for one person (the owner/manager) to pull the wool over your eyes when you go into a company for an interview. But if you can meet the people that work with/for her, you get a much better understanding of the company as a whole, and that gives you a great picture of what that leader is actually like.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of drawbacks with this: 1) it's pretty rare for a manager to let you meet many of her underlings during an interview, and 2) it would take an awfully long time if you were allowed to meet these people. But if you're really serious about your next job (as I hope to be), I think this may be the only way of being confident that you've joined the right firm.
I need to think more about this. As for Jeff's blog, I think I'd relate to it better if instead of baseball he used my national pastime - hockey. I wonder if anyone's done that?
Three down, one to go
After a few very tough weeks, the term is finally over. As I mentioned in an
earlier blog, the biotech program was not very well balanced in terms of the workload. In the space of 6 days I had to prepare and take part in 3 different presentations - two of which represented essentially the entire grade for their respective courses. Following this, I had 4 take-home exams in 7 days (one was my own doing - my fault for taking an extra course on top of the biotech program).
I never want to do another take-home exam again. At least with the in-class exams, you spend 4 hours on the thing and you're done. But these bloody take-homes - even though you're supposed to spend only 4 hours on it, you just know there will be some keeners in class spending every available hour, so you feel compelled to do the same. So what is supposed to be a 4-hour exam can easily turn into a 15-hour exam. Not pleasant.
But it's all over. Three terms of the MBA program down, one more to go. Even though the coming term will be lightest from a school workload point of view (I only have four classes plus the Ivey Client Field Project to do), it will likely be the most stressful term yet, thanks to the job search that starts now.
For now, though, I'm looking forward to 4 weeks of rest and relaxation (minus a little time spent on the ICFP and LEADER project preparations).
Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle