December Meeting Notes

I'm willing to temper my wine consumption to make it home safely, but all bets are off when it comes to taking notes, so let see if I can make any sense of what I wrote.

First things first - the spread was great once again. Elan's Toffee is do DIE for and here's a link where you can get it http://www.elancandy.com/

We REALLY missed Judi and Francie. We haven't all been at a meeting in months and it's just not the same. Still, as Karen said, it was a lot of fun and we did manage to discuss a few things investy.

We talked a bit about Bivio, which is easy as far as inputting stock purchases, but gets a bit dicier when it comes to dividends and commissions, which involve funky fractions. Karen's going to renew and give it one more go, with help from Ken if needed. We'll get tax forms one way or another. Karen called Sheila to get the lowdown on how we pay the Bivio membership. We now have the LCC papers from Sheila.

Stock reports

All of our current stocks seem to be happily in hold mode. Nobody recommended action either way.

Terri looked up LG, but could not find any real information about it ANYWHERE! Might be because it's on the Koran exchange. Rosetta stone is tanking, so that's a non- issue. She could not find info on Solar Wind. Terri plans to report on Steelcase and Hermann Miller later.

Karen checked out Vodaphone, which is on the London exchange and circuitiously through NASDAQ. This group is supplying communication tech for third-world countries. There is a competitor Karen wants to check out - Milleon (sp?) which is "poised to pop".

All stocks seem to be at or near their 52-week highs. Google is getting past our average cost point.

Mary didn't get the e-mail and can't access the blog, so at that point we started winging the research on the spot. (Mary's phone can do anything.) We looked up Kellogg and got stats, but it will take more time to research this sort of company - deep and broad and we're not sure what competitors are out there. They do offer dividends, have a PE Ration of 16.6, own some major brands and just promoted a new CFO from within.

Proctor and Gamble was the next check. Again - near the 52-wee high. 59% is owned by institutions and funds. THere are no women on the holder board. The two-year price high was about 15% higher than last year. Dividends provided. Comparisons with Johnson and Johnson brought us back to Proctor and Gamble. This would fill the consumer products gap in our portfolio. It's a blue-chip company, but not in Michigan.

We decided to purchase P&G with current dollars (minus Bivio $ needed?) as long as Judi and Francie had no objections.

Mary found out that we would be allowed to purchase AP Capital at certain times.