News
SPRING HILL — Just one year after the Deltona Corp. opened Spring Hill for business, a group of new Hernando County residents formed the Friendly Investment Club.
After more than 42 years of buying low and selling high, the club recently cashed in and called it quits.
"This is very sad, but it's time," said Bill Wells, club president and owner of Guido's Pizza Cafe in Spring Hill.
For years, the group of investors met on the third Tuesday of each month at the restaurant for breakfast and brokering.
The club weathered the storm of fluctuating markets, but waning membership and the speed needed to buy and sell stock successfully in today's market took its toll, Wells explained.
The Friendly Investment Club began with 20 members in 1969. At that time, Spring Hill Drive was a 2-mile, dead-end road. Hernando County's total population in the 1970 U.S. Census was only a little more than 17,000.
You had to know someone to get into the club. Membership included a buy-in for $1,000 and dues of at least $50 a month.
"I had to be invited by an existing member and apply. It was quite something," said Pat Castagna, 71, the club's assistant treasurer.
When he moved from Connecticut in 1997, there was a waiting list to join.
But as the club closed up shop, only nine members remained.
"Things had always been done a certain way, and members were slow to change," said Wells, who joined a little more than 10 years ago at the urging of his father, also named Bill Wells. The elder Wells, who died in 2007, had been a member since the mid 1980s.
When Al Smith joined the club in 1999, everything was recorded by pencil in a ledger.
"They wanted a treasurer, so I told them I'd take the job, providing we buy computer software," said Smith, a retired corporate finance officer with J.I. Case Co.
"We had to battle some of the old-timers at that time, and one even quit over that," said Roger Jones, 77, the club's longest active member with 15 years. He invited in his brother-in-law, Castagna, and also his sister.
"I only joined because I thought other women were going to join," said Regis Thorsell, 76, the club's only female member, a retired bank manager. But that was never to be.
Over the years, there were 74 members in the partnership. At the time the club folded, Paul Smith, 98, had been a member the longest — 26 years. Due to ailing health, he no longer attended meetings, but paid dues right up until the end.
In its heyday, the club was easily worth a half a million dollars, said Wells. When it closed its accounts and cashed in stock, the club had $70,000 in its coffers.
"Consistently, the group has turned an 8 to 12 percent profit," Castagna said, even with the last few years of market fluctuation.
Everyone agreed that the biggest all-time losing stock for the club was Washington Mutual. When the bank tanked in 2008, the club lost more than $8,500.
But the group bounced back with some smart picks, including Baidu, the Chinese version of Google, and Caterpillar Inc. Members also did quite well with the Hershey Co., Home Depot and Abbott Laboratories.
"I've gotten quite an education here," Wells said, adding that before he joined the club he didn't know much about investing.
"I've always learned something at the club," said Jones. "I'm going to miss it."
Loading...
