Meet Our 'First Lady'

Radio producer Janne Ryan took a leap of faith when she subscribed to Eureka Report last July. She signed up even before we launched our online publication and had to wait almost a month to receive her first copy. If we had planned it we could not have found a better reader representative in our first ever subscriber, a diversified investor with interests in almost every area of finance.

Janne became interested in investing about 20 years ago, and in recent years has become interested in reading the business sections of newspapers. But it was the launch of Eureka Report this year that prompted her to shift up a gear in the investing game.

After drawing a professional salary for more than 20 years (more recently she has worked as a freelancer at the ABC) she has steadily accumulated a well-balanced portfolio of investments. She has a string of ASX shares including BHP, Ten Network, Wattlyl (what a beauty '” up 16% after an Allco takeover officer announced on December 22) and Century Australia (a Listed Investment Company with links to Peter Morgan's retail fund 452 Capital; property interests in the Bondi area of Sydney; and, to top it off, is building an art collection.

"I find I have an interest in reading almost everything you publish because I have a fairly wide spectrum of interest,but, more than that, I want to know more. For instance, I don't have my own DIY super fund, but I'd like to do it someday so I read everything on the DIY area. I want to get very familiar with it and then when the time is right I'll go ahead and set up my own fund.

Janne says she loves the sharemarket and is always on the lookout for good value in Australian shares. She's not interested in short-term trading; what she wants is investments that will pay good returns in the medium to long term. A big fan of our weekly column from Charlie Aitken, she says: "I know that Charlie is an outrageous stockmarket bull, and I know he sticks his neck out, but I like that. I understand it, and I think it's great to get writers to be decisive in that vein."

Asked whether she would forgive a pundit like Aitken for making a mistake, especially in forecasting the future movement of specific shares, Janne says: "Yes, I know that nobody knows the future, but I like people to make calls. Like any other investor I will make up my own mind, but it's very stimulating to read someone who is decisive on any subject."

Along with thousands of other Sydney property investors, Janne is feeling a little gloomy about the property market; forecasters are tipping flat returns next year and that gross rental yields will be as low as 3%. " I know that for a generation everyone assumed that property was a wonderful market," she says. "I know it will always be a good investment, but I think there is one important change afoot that I'm only beginning to understand: the Government is making it a lot more attractive to go into shares with franked dividends and superannuation strategies that minimise tax. On the other hand, I think a succession of governments have eroded the attractions of property '” especially in New South Wales."

Janne bought her first property before she bought any shares and, as is often the case, one of her early forays into the market did not work out very well.

"I was one of the unfortunates who bought into Equiticorp, and it just completely disappeared," she says. (The New Zealand-based investment group, which had been listed on the ASX, collapsed in 1989.) "I've become a lot wiser after almost 20 years of investing. I don't trade and I like to buy and hold if I can. A few months ago I bought Babcock & Brown after they floated and then I sold. I now realise I should have held on."

Despite her experience, Janne describes herself as an investing "pup". She has greatly enjoyed Eureka Report's coverage of the less well-known areas of investment activity, such as a recent report on private equity investing. She was also interested in our feature on emerging markets.

Although she has been a member of the relatively small Australian media community for many years, working in newspapers and radio, she had not crossed paths with any members of the Eureka Report team, and signed up purely to learn more about investing. Her first conversation with our publisher, Alan Kohler, was at our Christmas party in Melbourne where she was guest of honour.

Janne has not worked professionally in online media but she is enthusiastic about it. "The great thing about being online is that you just go where you want to go '” no one forces you to go into some part of the report you're not interested in.

"As a subscriber I'd like to have more opportunity to engage with the Eureka Report team. If you had a forum or something like that where Alan [Kohler] and some other experts who are distinguished in their field of activity would talk, I'd enjoy it."

Janne enjoys our video interviews, particularly Michael Pascoe's features on Peter Morgan (of 452 Capital) and Paul Anderson (the former BHP chief) earlier this year. She would also like to see some more coverage of investing in art '” something Eureka Report has consciously avoided due to the paucity of statistical data available to local investors on prices and trading patterns.

But what Janne has found is a field worth exploring. "It just might be that one of my best investments ever has been in the art market," she says. "I collect video art, which is a very new and very specialised area. I bought a piece by a young Australian video artist named Shaun Gladwell and I could get a multiple '” maybe 10 times what I paid for it '” if I sold it tomorrow."