Accredited Investors Forum

[cwelsh]

I have several clients, including a few from Steady Options, that invest in private offerings.  These can range from anything from private bond offerings that may pay higher interest, to hedge funds, to individual businesses such as restaurants, hospitals, surgical centers, new technologies, and so forth.  I'm pretty discriminating when it comes to private offerings because of the higher risk involved.  However, when an offering does come across my desk that I'm interested in, it frequently is a larger opportunity than most my clients will do themselves. 

 

Unfortunately, the government frowns on general solicitation and advertising of private offerings (the rules have relaxed some but are certainly still there in a large part).  However, if we know an investor is accredited and has asked to see new opportunities, then there is no issue.  So, in working with Steady Options, we decided to launch an accredited investors/qualified client forum.  This forum will be to discuss private offerings that I have already evaluated as not worthless and for investors to pass on things they'd like me to evaluate for possible inclusion.  This will be a discussion forum, not just a promotional one.

 

The way I see the forum working is:

1.  I'll create a new thread for each private offering that has already been screened, link to and/or provide information for the offering, and allow members to evaluate it, discuss it, rip on it, and ask questions;

2.  There will be a general thread for accredited investor questions in general; and

3.  A third thread to submit private offerings you'd like me to review for inclusion (you can also always email me).

One of the biggest complaints I get about private offerings is that they are not screened before a client looks at them, and most of them are not things that anyone should invest in.  Hopefully this forum will fix that by allowing an advisor to pre-screen and then having a community to screen even further. 

Unfortunately you do have to be an accredited investor and/or qualified client to participate.  This means you will have to fill out a basic qualified client questionnaire and provide some basic income and/or asset information.  As an investment advisor and attorney, I have a legal duty to keep anything you submit confidential and will do so.  I don't sell email lists, client information, or anything of the sort.  This is solely for legal compliance issues.

 

If you have interest, feel free to post here, or email me at cwelsh@lorintinecapital.com.  If you have ideas on how to customize this forum to be a better tool for you, by all means, share.  This is something being created to assist accredited investors and if you won't use it then there's no point.

 

We're also considering making this open to all accredited investors, just not SO members, and are interested in getting feedback on that possibility. 

[Kim]

Just to clarify - the new forum was been created, but it is not visible to members, and will be accessible only to those who qualify as Accredited Investors.

[cwelsh]

We have two offerings that are going to be discussed next week.  I've had a few people email me with interest in participating.  If you do want to, please let me know.