Investment opportunities

When I was out Wednesday evening, enjoying the first evening of the Chusok (Korean Thanksgiving) holiday, I ran into my friend K. K is one of those foreigners who has really made his life here. He has been in Korea for 10 years, he has a nice girlfriend and an amazing two-story apartment. He told me that he was organizing a get-together for a bunch of friends. The point of which was to set up an investment group. The idea really got my attention.
Since getting to Korea, I haven't thought much about what to do with my money in more than the most general sense. I am still a week away from getting my second full paycheck, and I need to repay the money I owe for university. So long term investment isn't my first priority. However, upon talking a little more with K, I decided that even if I don't have the capital to do any serious investing, I am at the right time in my life to learn how to do it.
I went today at about 4pm to the apartment of one of K's friends where about 20 people showed up. We barbequed some chicken and enjoyed good beer and company for a couple of hours. I only knew a couple of people there and I was also the most recent entrant to Korea. It was really cool to meet some new people. Especially since so many of them have been in Korea for years and know all the tricks. Once we got down to business the meeting became really interesting. K's idea is to create a social network where we pool our intelligence, contacts, research and information to provide a knowledge base for many different kinds of investment. Everybody invests individually in whatever they want, but by combining our efforts we can all benefit together. We all stated what we were interested in, what we knew about investing and what our goals were. Many people, like me, were completely new to investing. But we all had knowledge to contribute. For example I got into some really interesting discussions about tech companies and stocks that I know about just from my personal interest in computers and the internet. However, many of the people there are already involved in personal investments, particularly e-trading and real estate. During the meeting we all discussed the areas of investment that we found particularly interesting. Then we all put our names down in the areas we will focus on. We will each be responsible for providing research and information in the one or two areas we are most interested in. Areas like real estate, tech stocks, natural resources, currency trading, emerging markets, mutual funds and ETFs.
One of the things I studied in university is how social networks form and affect our lives. I remember one of the books I read discussing how much of the job and financial success we attain in life is derived from "weak links" (acquaintances and social contacts) rather than from "strong links" (family and close friends). This entire project is about putting this into practice. We are creating a potentially powerful network of "weak links" to help create wealth. Once you factor in the outside links of each member the whole network has wonderful potential. For example, one of the group members has a family member who is a very important financial analyst in America. Apparently he is interviewed on MSNBC and Bloomberg all the time. Another group member had a college roommate who became a very successful investment banker.
Part of the plan is to create a website to allow us to channel all our research and information efficiently. One of our group members, Antony, is real computer wiz. So together with Antony and Misha, I will be helping to create the website for our new group. We are meeting on Sunday over coffee to plan the layout of the site. We even chose a server host and everyone chipped in money to pay for a year's hosting before we broke up the meeting. We plan on making a site which will allow us to provide information and have discussion on each area of interest separately.
What makes this so exciting (despite the fact that I will not have the capital to do my own investing for some time) is the feeling of energy and purpose which was present during the evening. I think that there is a good chance that this group will actually manage to create a real financial resource we can all benefit from. Living here in Korea we are in a unique position where we all have disposable income and a lifestyle that allows us to focus on other things than work. I think that once we get our group working I will try some virtual trading using the information we gather and see how I do, until the time when I have the means to do some real investing.
Anyway, I am feeling really charged about this. I recently wrote that I was at a point in my life where I was looking for new purpose. I think that this might provide me with an exciting and constructive way to develop some new life skills.