Article in Daily Telegraph Saturday 23/12/2006

Minuets step gingerly towards red-hot profits. By Emma Thelwell

The Minuets Share Club claims it was named after the small, tentative steps with which it approached the stock market six years ago, in much the same fashion as a delicate baroque dance.

However, the club's website reveals that its co-founder, Jackie Rice, typed up the "minuets" of the inaugural meeting with somewhat less delicacy and so inadvertently named the group.

The club is good-humoured about such early mistakes.

Jim Godwin, its share trader, said: "We started investing in 2000, just before the three-year down-trend. "We lost money during that time but we rode it out stoically – and now we're enjoying the uplift."

The group of 11 friends, from Barnt Green in Worcestershire, meet once a month to discuss their portfolio of 13 holdings. The club's website boasts that it "recently strode majestically into profit with our extensive portfolio of sure-fire winners".

Indeed, it has much to be proud of, with a portfolio worth almost £39,000 showing a paper profit of around £11,250.

This new-found success has much to do with a change in strategy.

In the early days, the club operated with a rigid stop-loss policy – automatically selling shares if prices dropped by 20 per cent, in a bid to prevent too much capital being lost in any one downward movement.

Dr Peter Rice, who founded the club with his wife Jackie, said: "The stop-loss policy triggered the loss of some of our most successful holdings, including Paypoint and Cairn Energy.

"Relaxing the policy has allowed us to hang on to some of our more volatile investments; one recent example is Rio Tinto which I'm glad we've stuck with."

The club has also been careful to make full use of its members' expertise.

Mr Godwin, a retired technology teacher, said: "We have a good insight into the health sector, as we have two GPs, a consultant, a micro-biologist and nurses in the club. They have told us the medical sector desperately needs alternative painkillers."

On this tip, the club initially invested in pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline.

However, Dr Rice said: "We did very well out of dividends with these two companies, but they were disappointments in the long term, offering little growth."

The club turned its attention to lesser-known, smaller stocks in hope of greater growth.

A Minuet favourite is Ark Therapeutics, a London-based developer of gene-based medicines, which recently obtained European patent approval for its Cerepro brain cancer drug. But its holding in Ark is actually showing a paper loss of around £200.

Faring better is the clubs' stake in GWPharma, which is up more than 12 per cent since they bought £1,140 of shares at 73p.

GWPharma developed the first medicinal product based on cannabis to be filed for approval in Britain. Sativex, an under-the-tongue spray based on cannabis extract, is aimed at multiple sclerosis sufferers and is intended to treat the muscle stiffness associated with the condition. GW Pharma is growing 11 acres of cannabis under glass at a secret location somewhere in Britain.

The club bought into its most successful health holding, Synergy Healthcare, at 210p a share. This week, Synergy was trading at around 672p. Last month, the company's order book totalled £675m, nearly five times this year's expected sales.

The club's largest holding is Anglo Irish Bank, which accounts for more than £6,500 of its portfolio. It currently shows a paper profit of almost £3,900. Such successes have instilled the club with quiet confidence, and encouraged its mission to "dive fearlessly into the dark waters of the stock market and rise, like salmon, with our futures secured by the purchase of a selection of well-placed shares."

Well, that's what it says on www.minuetsshareclub.co.uk.

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