STOCK MARKET MAGICIANS\Beardstown Ladies' Club shows how.

Byline: Deborah Adamson Daily News Staff Writer

For small-town folks Ann Brewer and Carnell Korsmeyer, beating Wall Street is as easy as apple pie.

The two are members of the Beardstown Ladies' Investment Club, which put their Illinois town on the map after racking up returns that most professional money managers only dream of.

Last year, a simply written book on investing from the club's mostly senior citizen members sold more than 300,000 copies. It spent almost three months on the New York Times best seller list.

"Our story is, if we can do this, you can, too," said the 63-year-old Brewer, who with Korsmeyer made the San Fernando Valley their first stop in Los Angeles for the tour to pitch the club's second tome, "The Beardstown Ladies' Stitch-in-Time Guide to Growing Your Nest Egg."

The pair had plenty to say about women and investing.

"Women traditionally were not very good at investing and that sort of thing," said Korsmeyer, 68. "They often are left to do it either because of death or divorce. It's something women need to know."

Their investment club began in 1983 with 16 female homemakers, farmers and professionals from Beardstown, a city of 6,000 that doesn't have a bookstore and only last year got its first automatic teller machine.

Only one member knew about the stock market. Another thought portfolio only meant briefcase.

They started meeting once a month in a church basement to learn how to pick stocks, faithfully following a guide from the National Association of Investors Corp. in Madison Heights, Mich.

They started the investment pool with $100 each, followed by $25 a month.

The club bought stocks of companies they knew: McDonald's, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart, among others.

"When Wal-Mart opened a store in Beardstown, we noticed the parking lot was always full and people were carrying packages out," Korsmeyer said. "They weren't just browsing, they were buying."

They've also made mistakes, like investing in fur coat maker Fur Vault.

"We bought stock just prior to a warm winter," Korsmeyer said. "Shortly after that, the animal rights groups became active and nobody bought fur coats."

But they held on to the investment even after it clearly was heading downhill, to spare the feelings of the member who recommended it. They lost $800.

"We learned not to be emotionally involved in stocks," Korsmeyer said.

Today, they have a portfolio of 30 stocks worth almost $200,000.

Their return? An average of 23.4 percent for 13 years. That clobbers the 14 percent average from the Dow Jones industrial average and Nasdaq for the same period.

"We invest conservatively. We're in for the long term and we don't time the market," Korsmeyer said. They did not invest in the more volatile technology sector, which had a rally in 1995.

Their success has brought them hometown fame, on a par with the young Abe Lincoln for his role in the local "Almanac Trial" (a witness said he saw a murder by moonlight; Lincoln pulled out an almanac to prove it was a moonless night). The women received a key to the city and will have a special day named after them.

How are their husbands taking their success?

"They are proud of us and I think they're as surprised as we are about it," Brewer said. "But it doesn't change much. I still have to clean house and do the groceries and dust. My husband's retired, but he won't hold a mop."

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(1 -- color) Ann Brewer, left, and Carnell Korsmeyer of Illinois are in L.A. on a book tour. (2) Carnell Korsmeyer, left, and Ann Brewer say women need their tips. Terri Thuente/Daily News