HERE'S the good news - and let's hope it stays good. Members of RICH - the Ridings investment Club Holdings - heard that their unit price had gone up drastically in a month - from £2.57 to £2.75.

Of course that was a snapshot of their shares status in mid-September - before the series of 13 successive Stock Exchange falls had institutional investors running to count their money.

But away with all you pessimists! A lot of market fortunes may yet be restored by the time the next unit price check is made by members - surely likely because share-buying was rarely cheaper than of late?

Anyway it's worth dwelling on just why those RICH pickings turned out so well.

It was partly due to the good performance of Medisys, which RICH members recommended and bought in two tranches - in February and in March. They were 96p then and reached £1.46 now.

Jim Porteous, RICH club chairman who like most members is a former Nestle employee - in his case trade communications manager and sales promotion manager - believes there's power in them yet, particularly since the company's development of a new safety syringe is fuelling rumours of planned takeover bids by the big health distributors.

Then there are ARM Holdings which RICH bought and recommended in April, now seeing a monthly increase from £6.50 to £7.70.

And last month's recommendations for Turbo Genset and Phytopharm have come up trumps.

Turbo Genset climbed from £25.50 to £25.70 based on the success of a high speed alternator which has a host of applications in power generation and the automotive industry. "Turbo is about to enter a new stage of development, so hang in there," Mr Porteous urged his members.

Phytopharm - a totally speculative buy - jumped from £5.40 to £6.50. It has important contacts outside the UK, particularly South Africa which is the plant source of its remarkable appetite suppressant. Another compound it is developing could, theoretically, reverse the process which leads to Alzheimer's disease.

But because the company is not yet making money any investment in it remains speculative.

So what were the RICH pickings for this month? Well, none that the group actually put money into - and that was not because it had no proposals but because it had no spare cash!

Two members announced they were going to leave the club this month as they were moving jobs to other parts of Nestle overseas. The rules kicked in. Normally each member buys RICH units in the club each month and the value of these go up or down in accordance with the value of the shares bought with the cash.

When a member leaves they get the value of their units on the day they bow out. If there are not enough liquid assets then some of the shares must be sold or remaining members may buy their units.

Jim explains: "As members wanted to maintain the portfolio as best we could this month, we used our subscriptions as cash to settle the accounts of members who were leaving."

But for the record had RICH the money to invest it would have considered targeting Billam (with the usual rider for all investments - that they could go down as well as up).

Billam has invested 340,000 Euros in acquiring 20 per cent of IVU Traffic Technologies' and together the companies will develop telematics, the science of transmitting readings of measuring instruments using radio waves - in effect, remote monitoring.

Billam is also investing £375,000 in TRI-MEX Holdings, which specialises in tracking systems and intends to float in 18 months on the back of its systems to track stolen cargo, which accounts for $30 billion dollars worth of losses each year.