At the December Meeting of Investment held in our U3A room, winners of the two small competitions that we have held throughout the year were announced.

Les Rodgers won the Monthly Selection competition whilst Malcolm Sanders won the Long Term selection.  Both winners were awarded the usual jar of jam.

During the latter part of 2021 Malcolm Sanders had asked members of Investment to suggest a portfolio worth $300,000 for a new retiree. The idea was that we ran with these portfolios for four months, and then saw which portfolio made the biggest increase. We had five people who participated and the winner was Les Rodgers who gained another jar of jam and a loaf of bread to go with it. Thank you Malcolm for running this competition.

During the first part of the afternoon Malcolm showed us an aspect of his share dealing, and also accessed two videos for us to watch.

After afternoon tea we looked at nine shares to watch. These different companies came from the Materials, Information Technology and Health Care sectors and all had interesting aspects which made them worthwhile putting on a watch list for a couple of months.

As this is our last report for 2021, may I take this opportunity to wish you all a Happy Christmas. Hope to see you all again in 2022.

Margaret Jenkins

​The September meeting of Investment was held by Zoom. We welcomed 10 participants including Pat Richardson from Wangaratta who is conducting a group similar to our group through U3A Wangaratta.

Australian equities marked the end of the current Reporting Season in August with an eleven month run of gains, the longest streak in 78 years. We noted the increased dividends paid by a number of companies, including the large miners which had profited from a high iron ore price for an extended period. We noted that the Iron Ore price had decreased considerably in the last month.

We discussed the fact that large amounts of cash were available for shareholders through the Buy Backs offered by both Commonwealth Bank and Woolworths. Wesfarmers were also having a return of capital to shareholders.

We looked at 10 franked income stock ideas for Australian Investors discussed in a special report by Morningstar. These were projected returns for 2021/2022 and needed to be assessed against current charts for each stock.

​The next meeting of Investment will be by Zoom on Friday 1st October 2021 at 2pm. The reason for this is that the Senior Citizens are playing bowls on Tuesday, Friday and Saturday afternoons, and there is a limit of 20 people in the whole building at any time. An invitation to the Zoom meeting will be sent out nearer the time.
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Margaret Jenkins