RICH is on the up!

The price of a Ridings investment Club Holding has risen from £2.39p last month to £2.51.

"That 12p represents a very satisfactory five per cent increase per month," said chairman Jim Porteous.

It underlines just how wise was last month's purchase of Trafficmaster, the company which provides traffic information to in-car information systems.

Its stocks zoomed by about 25 per cent, much to the delight of this group of managers and former managers of Nestl.

After all, they had recognised that an investment club is duty bound to invest, rather than use the "sock under the bed" method favoured by many at times when the economy rocks.

This month the members decided to take their profit on Jarvis, the York-based rail infrastructure and maintenance company used by Railtrack.

Jim said: "We felt that they it was nearing its ceiling, particularly as Railtrack is now in declared financial difficulties which we speculated might knock on to Jarvis.

"But it was worth it because we made more than 100 per cent profit - having bought shares at £2.50 and sold them at £5.20."

The group was interested to learn of a suggestion that the Government may compensate Railtrack shareholders and they agreed to wait to see at what level this would be pitched.

Members also decided to sell their Royal Bank of Scotland shares which they have held since March, 2000.

It was at that time bought at £8.46 and they have now been sold at £16.20 - another big gain, this time of almost 100 per cent. But it tops 100 per cent if you include the dividends it has reaped.

So where to invest all these gains now?

There were four proposals. One option was Sainsburys or Boots on rumours that the two organisations might merge. But it was thumbs down for time being because the whispers were at this stage not firm enough.

Another possibility was British Airports Authority - a good company with amazing prospects in spite of the short-term aftermath of terrorism strikes in the US. But the RICH members remained cautious and shelved that idea.

Next suggestion, also declined, was Cadbury Schweppes. But Sch... don't tell anybody the real reason - which was that loyalty to Nestl dictated that they could not live with their consciences by supporting a competitor.

But they did decide to make another speculative investment - about 30 per cent of spare cash - in the Home Entertainment Corporation (HEC) - a share listed on the AIM market and established in 1985 in competition with Blockbuster Videos.

HEC has four divisions - one called Video Box Office which offers packages of video hire to buying groups like corner stores Spa and Londis. Another division is called Choices Video which has 150 retail outlets throughout England and Wales, renting and selling video cassettes, DVDs and video games.

A third division is Choices Direct, which sells videos and audiotapes by mail order through agreements with the BBC; and finally it has Mosaic Movies, which buys film distribution rights for the video rental market.

Talking of films, do you remember the members' one-off investment in which they became "angels" for Carnaby Films' newest project, A Flight of Fancy, to be screened in a couple of months?

Well here is some news that augurs well for the angels really taking off: Jason Flemyng, who starred in Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is taking the lead in the film. What's more his latest role in From Hell - a remake of the Jack the Ripper story - has reached number one in the US box office