Regional Stock Reports

The stock market boom of the 1990s, the proliferation of 401(k) plans and the mass use of mutual funds so greatly increased the number of Americans who own equities that a new demographic term was born: the investor class.

It is partly, of course, simple Wall Street and boardroom greed, a cousin to the greed and gargantuan rewards in entertainment and sports. It is partly the degradation of professional standards, of the concept of the fiduciary, akin to the same market-driven devolution in divergent fields such as medical care, Hollywood, publishing and, yes, journalism.

My guess is that financial historians will start the clock in this epoch with the big merger scandals of the 1980’s — Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken and scads of lesser cads. Next came the long running, now forgotten, S&L scandals. Then a lull (maybe), punctuated by the pretty picture of the tech boom. That delusional portrait was been redrawn when we learned of the rigged IPO’s, insider trading, completely corrupt “analysis” practices at the Wall Street giants and old-fashioned flimflam.

So now we’ll be told that the market, smarter than any deliberately organized system, will correct this. After all, who would invest in a known corrupt game? No one, so the market will make fix it. Plus, the regulators are on the case.

The slow down down of buying mutual funds is exaggerated. Funds have grown and adapted over their 80-year history and continue to meet investors’ needs for diversification and professional management. Better tools to analyze and select funds mean CPA/financial planners can make better use of them in client portfolios.

Most mutual funds have increased their industry and sector fund offerings in areas such as energy, financial services, health care or technology. Exchange-traded funds also are a popular alternative for clients concerned about the tax consequences of mutual fund investing. And mutual fund companies also are making more hedge funds and funds-of-funds available.

As originally conceived, mutual funds had serious flaws, some of which are described here. The industry responded. Total shareholder costs on equity mutual funds declined 40% over the last two decades, funds now come in every size and flavor and management has worked diligently to reduce the annual bite for taxable investors by lowering portfolio turnover.

In addition to the efforts by fund management, CPAs are getting another boon in helping clients manage investment taxes. The SEC-mandated aftertax performance reporting will spread across the industry this year. CPAs will now be able to compare apples to apples because a fund is required to report as a return what the investor actually takes home after paying taxes, not what the fund manager generates.

It’s the CPA’s job to put new investment products to work for their clients. Quest Capital uses sector funds to add incremental performance to the overall portfolio. Carl Kunhardt, who chairs the firm’s investment committee, makes predictions on sector movements. He expected and received higher returns from the communication and technology sector funds he used in 1998 and 1999. In 2000 and 2001 his planners added real estate mutual funds and REITs to client portfolios.

Generally, having five to eight funds in your fund portfolio should meet your investing needs. The key to your strategy is figuring out your timeframe, risk level and asset allocation first before looking at fund categories and finally plugging in the actual funds.

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It is always much easier to start at the top, with your overall asset allocation plan, and then fill in the pieces, or funds, later. Too many investors go right to the fund selection, chasing the top funds as listed in magazines only to get burned when last year?

If you determine your overall investing position based on goals and timeframe, you can lay out a strategy. For example, a young couple, without children, who have a high combined income, can be aggressive in their choices. They may opt to put 80 percent of their investment dollars into riskier, aggressive funds and the remaining 20 percent into more conservative fund investments. They have time on their side and are not averse to taking some financial risk.

Mutual fund advertisements tell you, usually in the finest of print “Past performance is no guarantee of future results.” While that statement has always been true, now’s a particularly good time to take heed. It’s been an especially topsy-turvy time for fund managers and investors, which makes it that much harder to evaluate potential homes for your investment dollars. Which is not to say you should ignore a fund’s recent performance if you want to add it to your portfolio. Just take it with a big ol’ grain of sodium chloride.

Once you have a particular fund in mind, check with Morningstar Inc. or another fund-rating agency to see how the fund compared with its peers over one-, three-, five- and 10-year periods. If its annual returns are not in the top half of all funds in its category over most, if not all, of those time periods, this investment is a nonstarter. Walk away. If it is in the top five deciles-top 50 percent — over all or most periods, look into it a little further.

Foremost, don’t overpay. Why pick a high-expense fund if there’s a low-expense alternative that’s just as good? And don’t pay a sales charge, or load, to a broker if you’ve done the investment homework yourself.
There are plenty of low-cost, no-load funds out there with above-average returns and managers with long-term track records. You just have to look closely enough to find them.

Index funds let an investor stick with a successful benchmark that everyone uses. An index fund mirroring the S&P 500, or another broad-based index, lets you be in various sectors and invest in both growth and value funds, giving you maximum diversification.

However, when dealing with stocks that are undervalued, or available at a discount, unforeseen events are unimportant in that without any new earnings or additional profits, the shares are already “poised” to return to that inherent value which they have.

The Dow Jones: The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which was invented by Charles Dow in 1896, is the most widely followed index in the world. Included are major companies such as General Electric and Exxon.

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Two experts who believe that the life insurance industry’s picture is far brighter than it first appears are Paul Hoffman and Anthony M. Santomero of the Wharton School’s Financial Institutions Center. Their paper, “Life Insurance Firms in the Retirement Market: Is the News All Bad?” answers their own titular question with a decided “no.” Hoffman and Santomero point to a number of facts that, while not completely reassuring to the industry, definitely show some profitable opportunities.

There has also been a decided shift in the nature of the nation’s retirement assets. In 1980, total defined benefit assets in the U.S. were 2.5 times defined contribution assets (mostly, 401(k) plans). By 1993, the latest date for which figures are available, total funds of both types of plans were almost equal. From 1984 to 1993, total U.S. 401(k) assets alone grew from about $92 billion to $616 billion, increasing from 0.74% of Americans’ total wealth to 2.18%. As a share of total retirement capital, 401(k)s rose from about 7% in 1984 to 16.6% in 1993, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Individual retirement accounts, although no longer as attractive as a saving vehicle due to the loss of most tax advantages in 1986, still capture a huge amount of total retirement assets. By the end of 1996, savings in IRAs had swollen to $1.35 trillion, representing around 3% of U.S. wealth. Most of the growth was from gains in the equity market rather than in new contributions.

With these developments in mind, strategy for life insurance firms in the decade ahead need to aim at stopping their skid out of the retirement market, where they have fallen from a 22.7% market share in 1983 to 18% in 1996. 1. Retain dominance in annuities by increasing cost efficiency in delivery and holding down fees, to maintain competitiveness with other financial services. 2. Slow down loss of market share for IRA accounts. While this market has diminished in terms of new contributions, financial returns on existing IRA assets have grown to 12% of insurance company pension assets as of 1996, from 3.3% in 1983. 3. Jump with both feet into the exploding 401(k) market, with particular emphasis on pursuing the fat market for rollover accounts.

Insurers’ strength is that they can leverage a wide spectrum of products to help them to protect their presence in the retirement marketplace. For example, they can offer one-stop shopping for a combination of retirement income, long-term care coverage and estate protection. By offering consumers products that blend traditional risk protection with asset management, insurers may be able to protect their own future.

In an effort to maximize returns, many funds turned away from Jones’ strategy, which focused on stock picking coupled with hedging, and chose instead to engage in riskier strategies based on long-term leverage. These tactics led to heavy losses in 1969-70, followed by a number of hedge fund closures during the bear market of 1973-74.

With media attention still focused on the recent failure of some hedge funds, there has been an increasing move towards their regulation. In 2004, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted changes that require hedge fund managers and sponsors to register as investment advisors under the Investment Advisor’s Act of 1940. This greatly increased the number of requirements placed on hedge funds, including keeping up-to-date performance records, hiring a compliance officer and creating a code of ethics. This was seen as an important move in protecting investors

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