A few things you should know about BetterInvesting member Gayle Olson of Bloomington, Minn.

•     I’ve been a member of BetterInvesting since 1990. The Buttonwood Investment Club (founded in April 1987) wasn’t doing too well, so when one of our members brought a brochure to a meeting,  we decided to join and learn.
•    My wife Dee and I live in a senior independent living facility in Bloom­ington, Minn. I call it Geezerville.
•    I was an insurance agent for 41 years and retired in 1995.
•    The Buttonwood Invest­ment Club still keeps me busy, as do activities in BetterInvest­ing’s Northern Lights Chapter. I also enjoy travel and model railroading.
•    Pay absolutely no attention to the media when you invest. If you look very closely, most of the advice in ­articles is contradictory. Stories are transitory, statistics are not. Prognostication is the province of fools.
•    When I first started investing, I wish I’d known to ignore the story. Short of getting an MBA, learning Better­Investing methodology is the best way to become a successful investor. In some ways, it may even be better.
•    I enjoy studying behavioral finance and try to keep
emotions out of my investment decisions.
•    I wrote about 40 articles for BITS when it was a print publication, and I’m the inventor/author of the Price Variant Quotient (first published in BITS in 1994). Inspiration for the PVQ came from a conversation I had with Ken Janke when he was in Minneapolis for a Better­Investing event. When he mentioned that the ­average stock price varies about 50 percent from high to low in any given 52-week period, it occurred to me that if you calculated the average variation for 52 weeks and subtracted that percentage from the most recent 52-week high, you’d have another possible low price choice based on actual trading history.
•    I occasionally write articles for our chapter newsletter and have written a booklet called Objective Value Investing as a tutorial for our club members.
•    As a young man I raced hydroplanes, which are boats designed to ride on top of the water instead of in it.

I drove one for a local playboy/sportsman in the Midwest Power Boat Association and it helped pay my tuition at the University of Minnesota in 1950. I also took flying lessons and rode a motorcycle up until 2003.

Websites of Interest
Gayle Olson’s Price Variant Quotient PDF