With a Broker lined up for the club to work with, the club can now purchase its first stock - the reason for starting an investment club. But which stock should that be? Fortunately, investment clubs are as much about learning about the ins and outs of investing as they are about delivering profits. Yet without a clear education program in place, a club can find itself dabbling in various areas of the Stock Market without ever creating a real sense of understanding of it with your members.

Floundering without an education program when starting an investment club is an easy result to understand. There is simply so much to learn about investing, from the different markets, to the regulations, to how to use NAIC's Stock Selection Guide.

When starting an investment club, you’ll want to have educational material that is going to give all the members an overview of how investing works. As members become more experienced and knowledgeable about investing, you’ll want your educational program to become more focused. 

That focus should be determined by the clubs Education officer, or Vice-President, with the input of the club members. Find out what people are interested in learning about, and where they feel they need to know more. No matter where you are in the level of education material that you’re looking at when starting an investment club, you’ll want to have a definite plan about what you want to learn.

Start out slow with your educational program and build up. You may want to start by learning about the different types of stock analysis, and getting a feel for how the many different tools are used. There may be times when you want to ask a guest speaker to your meetings to give you first hand experience of the investing world.  This is a great way to get information that you can actively use in your own investment club.  Experienced investors can give you an overview of their own investing guidelines and advice.

The club could also consider organizing a field trip to a stock exchange, or perhaps use a pop quiz to shake things up a little. As long as all the members of the club are involved, the education component of your meeting will be a vital part of the club experience. When starting an investment club you should be looking to your education component as the center of the excitement that you will keep in your investment club.

There are a number of places on the Internet where you can learn more about investing, some of which are geared specifically to investment clubs. The following chapter looks at links to internet resources that you should use in this regard.