Highlights and Commentary

By Roy Weitz

(Originally posted October 1, 2000) [Archive Table of Contents]
Hanging tough: In case you missed it, the past few years have been tough ones for value funds of all stripes.....Nevertheless, this month's FundAlarm Honor Roll contains 22 diversified, domestic value funds that have managed to outperform their respective benchmarks over the past 12 months, three years, and five years:

The FundAlarm "Value" Honor Roll
Large-cap value:	Mid-cap value::
Bridgeway Social Responsibility (BRSRX)	WM Growth Fund of Northwest (CMNWX)
Enterprise Growth and Inc Y (ENCEX)	Small-cap value:
Excelsior Value & Restruct (UMBIX)	Bridgeway Ultra-Small Co (BRUSX)
Hancock Large Cap Value A (TAGRX)	Royce Low-Priced Stock (RYLPX)
Hancock Large Cap Value B (TSGWX)	State St Research Aurora A (SSRAX)
Heritage Capital Apprec A (HRCPX)	State St Research Aurora B (SSRBX)
Heritage Capital Apprec C (HRCCX)	State St Research Aurora C (SSRDX)
Legg Mason Value Nav (LMNVX)	Balanced value:
Legg Mason Value Prim (LMVTX)	Invesco Balanced Inv (IMABX)
Nations Blue Chip Inv A (PHBCX)	Jamestown Balanced (JAMBX)
Salomon Bros Capital O (SACPX)	Van Kampen Equity-Income A (ACEIX)
Vanguard Growth & Income (VQNPX)	Van Kampen Equity-Income B (ACEQX)

"Value," of course, is a relative term, and getting more relative by the moment.....Some (most?) of the funds above stretch the traditional definition of value but, on the whole, we think the classification is appropriate.....Flexibility has been the key to recent success for most of these funds.....If we're entering a more difficult period for stocks in general, and it seems that we are, flexibility is likely to be a desirable attribute.

Shep Perkins Select Wireless

By the time you read this, Fidelity's new Internet-funds-by-any-other-name will be up and running.....Shep Perkins is in charge of Fidelity Select Wireless and Jed Weiss has been handed the reins of Fidelity Select Networking and Infrastructure.....Perkins had a six-month tenure as manager of Fidelity Select Medical Delivery (August 1999 through February 2000), during which time the fund lost about 15% of its value.....Otherwise, he has spent his three years at Fidelity in analyst positions, most recently following communications and utility stocks.....Thus, Perkins actually has a few months of relevant experience in the sector he will be managing -- a remarkable coincidence at any Fidelity Select fund..... Continuing with remarkable coincidences, Weiss also has some recent experience as an analyst of semiconductor and networking stocks, and about three years of experience overall with Fidelity.

Jed Weiss Select Networking & Infrastructure

When Fidelity finally decides to enter a sector, and the company launches a Select fund, there seems to be some notion among investors (and certain financial journalists) that the sector has finally "arrived".....Historically, however, Fidelity's presence in a particular sector has meant little in terms of performance, and the mere presence of Fidelity in the Wireless and Networking/Infrastructure sectors is likewise no guarantee of future success.....As shown by the table on the accompanying page, 34 Fidelity Select funds have been in existence for at least 60 months.....Over the past five years, six of these Select funds have returned less than U.S. Treasury bills, 12 have returned less than the Vanguard Balanced Index, and 20 (59% of the total) have trailed the Vanguard Total Market Index fund.....If you decide to invest in the new Fidelity Select non-Internet Internet funds, you certainly won't be alone.....Just remember that "Fidelity Select" is not the same as "Fidelity Guaranteed."


Them need a proofreader!




Certain aspects of the money management business never cease to amaze us -- for example, the whole area of hidden trading costs.....Large consulting firms exist solely to help institutional investors (such as mutual funds) minimize their trading costs, yet individual fund investors hear almost nothing about the issue.....How can this be?....For one thing, it's a technical area.....For another thing, most people don't give a hoot.....But hoot or not, the numbers are astonishing.....According to The Plexus Group (www.plexusgroup.com), a typical buy of a large-cap stock can easily incur costs equal to 1% of the purchase price, and a sale can cost about the same, for a round-trip cost of 2%.....For small-cap stocks, it's not uncommon for the buy and sell to be in the neighborhood of 4.5% each.....In other words, when a small-cap fund sells one stock and buys another, the first 9% of return on the new holding merely earns back the transaction costs.

For folks who trade stocks on their own, these numbers probably seem impossible.....But remember, the major costs incurred by institutional investors don't exist for individuals.....The Plexus Group talks about trading cost in terms of an "iceberg".....The visible part of the iceberg consists of brokerage commissions and market impact costs (price movement while an order is in the broker's hands).....Although these can be substantial, they're often dwarfed by two other hidden costs: "delay" and "missed trades"......"Delay" occurs when orders are sitting on a fund's trading desk, but aren't released to the broker because the trader is afraid of swamping the market....."Missed trades" are a natural consequence of delays: If the price moves too much before the trade can be completed, the manager will pull back on the trade.

The graphic below is a small (and unreadable) version of The Plexus Group transaction cost "iceberg".....Click within the blue border to view the full-size graphic.


Click to view full size
There's a lesson in all of this for mutual fund investors, and the lesson is probably older than either of this year's presidential candidates: If you have a choice (and you almost always do), it's better to invest in smaller funds, and low turnover is also a plus.....Smaller funds minimize the cost of market impact, delay, and missed trades.....Low-turnover funds, by definition, don't pay a lot of brokerage commissions.


"What happens to individual investors when institutional investors are active in a stock? Do individuals become the mice trampled by the elephants' dance?".....Those are the questions posed by Wayne Wagner, of The Plexus Group, in a short piece that he's allowed us to reproduce on the accompanying page.....It's a good read if you actively trade individual stocks -- or you're tempted to do so.


Let's face it: A lot of the tax planning tips that you read in newspapers, magazines and (gasp!) Web sites either don't apply to your situation, or the potential savings aren't worth your time and effort.....But tax planning for mutual fund losses is different: It's a relatively simple strategy, there's a good chance that you can take advantage of it, and the savings can easily run into the hundreds of dollars for a few minutes of work.

To understand how you can benefit from tax-loss planning, let's say you invested $10,000 in Monument Internet fund at the beginning of this year, and the shares are worth $7,000 on October 15 (we're ignoring any dividends).....You're now the proud owner of a $3,000 short-term capital loss, which you can "recognize" by selling the shares.....You can use your recognized loss to offset an equal amount of recognized gains, if you have them.....You can also use your $3,000 loss (the maximum amount allowed per year) to offset ordinary income, such as salary, dividends, and interest.....In the latter case, your tax savings will depend on your tax bracket: In the 39.6% bracket, a $3,000 loss can save as much as $1,188 in taxes......In the 15% bracket, the tax savings are lower ($450), but most people would consider even that amount worth their while.

If you engage in this kind of classic tax planning, you need to watch out for the classic tax trap: the "wash sale".....The best way to understand the wash sale rule is to imagine a world without wash sales: In a wash-less world, you could sell Monument Internet at 12:00, buy the shares back at 12:01, recognize a $3,000 loss for tax purposes, and still have exactly the same economic position that you had at 11:59....Not bad for two minutes of work.....The wash sale rule is the government's way of saying this: "If you are going to benefit from a capital loss, your economic position must be significantly altered for a reasonable period of time"......Congress has determined that 30 days is such a reasonable period.....Therefore, in our example, if you acquired an equal number of Monument Internet shares 30 days before or after you sold them, your loss would be disallowed (technically, suspended).

Is there a way to beat the wash sale rule?.....Hey, it's the tax law: Of course there is.....The wash sale rule applies only to acquisition of the same or "substantially identical" mutual funds....The trick is to identify an investment that is similar to Monument Internet, but not the same or substantially identical.....How about RS Internet Age?.....Looks good, and now your strategy is complete: On October 15, you sell your shares of Monument Internet, and reinvest in RS Internet Age.....You maintain your exposure to the Internet sector, without missing a day, and you get to deduct a $3,000 capital loss without running afoul of the wash sale rule.....Thirty days later, you can safely sell your shares of RS Internet Age and reacquire Monument Internet, or you can stay with RS Internet Age.....In most cases, we suspect, you'll want to keep the shares of the new fund.

FundAlarm readers already know the following, but we have to say it anyway: For all but the simplest transactions (like our example), you should consult a tax advisor.....The strategies above only apply to taxable accounts.....Tax-loss planning may result in professional fees and transaction costs, especially if you trade through a mutual fund supermarket..... But try to keep your perspective: The tax savings can far outweigh the costs, and this is still one of the freest lunches around.


The mutual fund industry wants to protect you! As we discussed last month, "folios" are do-it-yourself baskets of stocks that have some potential, in the long run, to siphon business from conventional mutual funds.....In a recent letter to the SEC, the top lawyer and tattletale for the Investment Company Institute (the mutual fund trade association) urged the SEC to regulate folios as mutual funds.....This, of course, would make folios more expensive, more difficult to market, and less of a potential threat to established funds.....For the record, the folks who sell folios are equally adamant that folios aren't mutual funds.....Ultimately, the SEC decision will turn on arcane points of securities law, about which FundAlarm knows little.....But in the short run, the tactics of the fund industry should be familiar to any kid who ever wanted to let the air out of an opponent's tires just before the start of a big bicycle race.


Our old friend Porky waddled into the office the other day, picking up his mail and saying hello after a lazy summer.....As usual, Porky brought news about some of his soulmates at the trough:

• The Excelsior fund family has raised expenses on five of its nine domestic stock funds, three of its five international stock funds, and five of its eight bond funds.....Assets at the Excelsior family have increased nicely over the past year or so, but fund executives apparently haven't gotten to the "Economy of Scale" chapter in their introductory Economics textbook.....For example, at Excelsior Value & Restructuring, which is now twice as big as it was last year, expenses are being increased about 13%......A company spokesperson could not say what the additional money would be used for, but it appears to be headed for that bottomless and unaccountable pit called "administrative and service expenses"....Oh, we almost forgot: The expense increase officially has nothing to do with Schwab's purchase of the Excelsior funds (and U.S. Trust) earlier this year.
  Dan Culloton, Morningstar.com, August 30, 2000
  
  
  
• Neuberger Berman is asking shareholders to approve the addition of a 0.10% 12b-1 fee to its Genesis, Guardian, and Partners Trust offerings (NBGEX, NBGTX, NBPTX, respectively).....All three funds have been mediocre-to-dismal performers over the past five years, and at first we thought there was some mistake: Neuberger must really be offering a rebate of 0.10% to its long-suffering investors.....We double-checked, however, and this is indeed an increase......The fee would go to third-party service providers (such as brokerage firms) to compensate them for servicing fund shareholders and paying individual sales reps.....Third-party service providers will apparently not receive any additional compensation for enduring the scorn and abuse of clients who invest in these funds.
  
  
  
• Want to earn an additional $8 million per year?.....Alliance Capital Management does, so the company is asking shareholders of Alliance Growth & Income to approve a 36% increase in the fund's management fee.....Alliance says that it needs the additional money to "improve the fund's research process," but (of course) details are not given.....When it comes to research, analyst salaries are typically the only big-ticket items.....With an extra $8 million, Alliance could afford to hire about 30 additional research analysts -- but something tells us that's not going to happen.....Alliance could also use its $8 million windfall to buy about 3,200 new computers each year and surf the Internet like crazy.....That also seems unlikely, so we really have no idea how all those "research" dollars are going to be spent.

The long and the short of it:

The long:

Here's Ralph Wanger, head of the Acorn funds, quoted in a June 2000 press release. Wanger had just agreed to sell his funds to Liberty Financial:
	"This merger makes sense. Liberty Financial will give us access to a strong distribution company, and the Acorn Funds will complement the Liberty Fund family's current product offerings"

The short:

Here's Ralph Wanger, head of the Acorn funds, quoted in Investor's Business Daily, September 21, 2000:
	"There's a lot of change in the market; that's why I sold"

Time to shine some light on this issue? If a mutual fund wants to buy shares in a non-U.S. company, it often has two choices: Buy the shares directly on a foreign exchange, or buy ADRs (American Depositary Receipts).....ADRs are certificates that represent shares of a foreign company held on deposit in a home-country bank.....ADRs trade on U.S. stock exchanges, and they're designed to avoid many of the legal and practical problems that come from directly owning foreign shares.

Theoretically, an ADR should track the price and performance of its underlying stock very closely.....In the real world, this is seldom the case, and ADRs are often both more volatile and more expensive than the stocks they're designed to shadow.....Recently, for example, Janus Global Technology had about a 1% position in the ADR of Taiwan Semiconductor, at a time when the ADR was selling for a substantial premium over the market value of the underlying shares.....At least two funds, Newport Tiger and Putnam International New Opportunities, refused to pay the ADR premium, and they chose to invest directly in Taiwan Semiconductor via the local stock market.....Sometimes, a fund manager has good reasons for choosing the ADR over the underlying stock, and liquidity often leads the list.....Other times, fund managers get lazy, or they guess wrong, and it turns out that owning the ADR was a mistake.

We took at look at recent shareholder reports for about a dozen international funds, all of which own ADRs, and we didn't find a single mention of the manager's ADR strategy, or a separate review of ADR performance.....For example, how and why did the manager decide between ADRs and underlying stocks?.....In cases where the underlying stock was available, and the manager decided to buy the ADR (or vice versa), did the manager make the right decision?.....What effect did ADRs have on the volatility of the fund?.....We're not asking for a lot: Just a little sidebar discussion would be nice.
"New Math for ADRs," Maggie Mahar, Bloomberg Personal Finance, September 2000


Bob Markman runs several funds-of-funds, and Markman has recently been an outspoken critic of traditional diversification and asset allocation theory.....Now, it appears that Markman also has a bone to pick with the calendar:


Source: www.markman.com.
Thanks to "Ted," an esteemed regular on the FundAlarm Discussion Board


More problems with the calendar, or a very old fund manager:



Putnam International Voyager, from the Putnam Web site

Briefly noted:

• Remember those guys on the Ed Sullivan show, who used to keep five plates spinning at the end of a stick?…..Remember Kim Goodwin, manager of American Century Growth (TWCGX), and an occasional schmoozer with Louis Rukeyser?……Goodwin will join James Stowers III as chief investment officer, and Goodwin will now be responsible for overseeing the teams that run American Century's Select, Ultra, Vista, Giftrust, Heritage, New Opportunities, Life Sciences, and Technology funds…..In her spare time, Goodwin will continue as co-manager of the Growth fund, where she now receives second billing to three-year veteran Greg Woodhams
  
  
  
• On September 12, Janus quickly and neatly closed the flagship Janus fund, which was a good move and long overdue.....Janus also announced that it's opening a clone fund, Janus 2, on December 29.....This may not be so good.....For one thing, if Janus Jr. buys and sells the same stocks as Janus Sr., then the combined lack of flexibility for the two funds will essentially be the same as if Janus Jr. had never been created.....However Janus Jr. will have one big advantage over Janus Sr.: The lack of built-in capital gains.....If the two funds really do operate about the same, investors in Janus Sr. might want to consider switching over to the Junior version, in order to avoid future capital gain distributions.....This, of course, could accelerate the tax bill for the remaining Janus Sr. investors.....It has also been suggested that a closed Janus fund could help push more new money to funds such as Janus Enterprise and Janus Mercury, resulting in yet another outbreak of bloatus Janusianus.
  "Closing Time! Shuttered Flagship May Affect Janus Fund Investors," Ian McDonald, TheStreet.com, September 14, 2000
  
  
  
• Of the four major clone funds already in existence, two have outperformed their respective parent (Fidelity Contrafund II, Vanguard Windsor II), and two haven't:
  
  

  Parent fund	Clone fund	Parent vs. clone since September, 1995 (Avg. ann'l %)
  Nicholas	Nicholas II	18.01 vs. 15.37
  Fidelity Contrafund	Fidelity Contrafund II	17.90 vs. 26.49*
  Vanguard Windsor	Vanguard Windsor II	13.46 vs. 16.85
  Fidelity Equity Income	Fidelity Equity Income II	16.52 vs. 16.00

  * From clone inception (April 1998)
  "Clone funds: Is Two a Crowd?," Catherine Valenti, TheStreet.com, September 19, 2000
  
  
• Green Century Balanced is an environmentally-conscious fund, and the people who run the fund would be pretty annoyed if some toxic consumer product were labeled as "green".....Well, then, it's our turn to point out that this fund is improperly labeled as "balanced".....Sure, the fund meets the technical definition of a balanced fund -- it holds about 70% of its portfolio in stocks, and the rest in bonds.....But even in this age of loosey-goosey fund names, we suspect that most consumers still expect a "balanced" fund to be relatively "conservative," and we suspect that the people who run Green Century Balanced are well aware of this.....Clearly, this fund fails to meet those consumer expectations.....Recently, for example, the stock portion of Green Century Balanced was heavily tilted toward volatile small- and mid-cap stocks, with a technology weighting of about 42%, while the bond portion of the fund was invested about 80% in the junk category.....According to fund manager , "It's not written anywhere that balanced funds have to invest in anything that goes flat or goes down"*.....This is true, but it's also not written anywhere that clear-cut forests are ugly.....If a socially-conscious fund takes the moral high road in one area, it seems that consumers are at least entitled to truth in packaging.
  * "Top-Performing Balanced Fund Tilts Toward Aggressive Holdings,"Catherine Valenti, TheStreet.com, September 14, 2000
  
  
  
• Fayez Sarofim manages four Dreyfus funds,* and you can read all about his "soap-opera" life in a recent Forbes article (see "Selected Web links," at the top of this page).....Hint: He's not a little cuddle bear.....Meanwhile, Sarofim's money management firm is reportedly up for sale.
  * Dreyfus Appreciation, Dreyfus Tax-Managed Growth, Dreyfus Premier Worldwide Growth, Dreyfus Tax Smart Growth
  
  
  
• Back in 1997, Christopher Davis took over as lead manager on several funds (Davis Financial, Davis Growth and Income, Davis Growth Opportunity, Davis New York Venture, Selected American), and his father (Shelby Davis) moved into an advisory role.....Now, Chris is buying the management company from his father for the bizarre symbolic sum of $11,000......The market value of the firm is estimated to be $1.5 billion, so it looks like Dad could have a hefty gift tax bill come next April......Christopher's brother, Andrew (who manages Davis Convertible Securities and Davis Real Estate) will own half of the management company stock, but Christopher will retain voting control.....It's a pretty good bet that Andrew won't be pissing off Christopher any time soon.
  
  
  
• 
  
  We're finished with our discussion of the Davis brothers.
  This cute little graphic appears on the Home page of SilverInfo.com.
  
  
• Here's a bit of perspective: The Kemper Technology Fund started life in 1948 with a name that reflected the most enticing technology of the day: the Television Fund.....In 1950, it broadened into the Television-Electronics Fund, and in the late 1950s its portfolio included such trend-setting names as Adressograph-Multigraph Corp. and Dictaphone Corp.
  "Kemper fund was tuned in to tech 52 years ago," Dave Kovaleski, Investment News, September 11, 2000
  
  
  
• The founder and portfolio manager of the Parnassus funds has announced that he plans to semi-retire by 2002…..According to a report on Financial-Planning.com, Jerome Dodson will appoint new co-portfolio managers to three of the four Parnassus funds by the end of this year (Parnassus Equity Income, Parnassus Fixed-Income, and Parnassus California Tax-Exempt), although Dodson will continue to run the flagship Parnassus fund solo…..During 2001, these new co-managers will gradually assume Dodson's responsibilities…..What should Parnassus investors do, in light of these changes?….. Someone named Roy Weitz, publisher of FundAlarm.com, is quoted as saying "I would put [the funds] on a very short leash and look at [them] again in six to nine months. I would suggest moving [them] pretty high up on the watch list"…..Timeless advice, indeed.
  
  
  
• The following pieties were recently attributed* to Bob Gintel, of the Gintel fund: "I don't think managers should try to soup up returns. The best approach, no matter what's happened in the past, is a steadfast, long-term approach focused on good stock picking"…..Before you ask Mom for another slice of apple pie, you should also know that Gintel has been holding 20% of his fund's assets in cash since the beginning of the year…..According to Gintel, "I'm still not jumping in because the market may deteriorate further. We're taking it week by week, trying to figure out when to invest our cash reserves"…..In other words, Gintel is a long-term investor who tries to time the market, a "steadfast" stock picker with a week-by-week perspective …..There we go again, getting all confused.
  * "Fund Gains Seen Headed Back Toward 10%," Peter McKenna, Investor's Business Daily, September 29, 2000
  
  
  
• Look at the five largest capital gain distributions declared by Fidelity as of September 28, and you'll note that three of them came from funds that also had a manager change this year:
  
  

  Fund	Distribution as % of NAV	Manager change in 2000?
  Fidelity OTC	15.93%	Yes
  Fidelity Contrafund II	13.94%	Yes
  Fidelity Fifty	13.88%	No
  Fidelity Low-Priced Stock	10.78%	No
  Fidelity	7.41%	Yes

  
  
  At Fidelity, manager turnover is not only an accepted part of business, it's built-in to the corporate culture.....After all, without turnover, how are all those Select fund managers going to be promoted?.....As long as Fidelity continues to be run this way, Fidelity investors might as well learn to accept these turnover-related distributions as a Fidelity Surcharge -- an additional cost that simply comes from being a Fidelity customer.
  
  
  
• There's been little change in the Morningstar corporate 401(k) plan over the past 12 months.....Fidelity Low Priced Stock appears to be the only dropout.....Otherwise, the names remain the same: Brandywine (BRWIX), Domini Social Equity (DSEFX), Gabelli Asset (GABAX), Harbor Capital Appreciation (HACAX), MAS Mid Cap Growth (MPEGX), MSDW Institutional U.S. Real Estate (MSUSX), Oakmark Select I (OAKLX), PIMCO High Yield (PHIYX), PIMCO Total Return (PTTRX), Selected American (SLASX), T. Rowe Price Small Cap (OTCFX), Templeton Developing Markets (TEDMX), Vanguard 500 Index (VFINX), Vanguard International Growth (VWIGX), Vanguard Life Strategy Growth (VASGX).....There's still not a pure tech fund in the group, which is even more remarkable given the relatively young age of the average M* employee.
  
  
  
• Steve Goodbarn, Janus Chief Financial Officer, resigned from the firm on September 25 to pursue his "own personal goals"…..Goodbarn is just 43 years old, he held a plum job in the mutual fund industry and, oh yes, Goodbarn's resignation is officially "unrelated" to the recent spinoff of Janus into Stillwell Financial, or the recent departure of Jim Craig, Janus Chief Investment Officer.....According to a Janus spokesman, "Forty-three year old guys voluntarily give up great jobs with great companies all the time, and there is no deeper meaning to Steve Goodbarn's departure"…..Okay, you caught us: That last quote is made-up.....But that's exactly what Janus would have you believe.....Do you?
  
  
  
• If you owned a fund that had been closed to new investors for seven years, and it was suddenly reopened, you might think that something had changed.....The Strong Common Stock Fund was closed in 1993, and Strong recently announced that it would reopen on December 1, 2000.....The official explanation for reopening: Research has shown that a closed fund is not necessarily good for investors, since a shrinking asset base could force a manager to sell stocks that he doesn't want to.....One big problem with the official explanation: The asset base of Strong Common Stock has been steadily growing, not shrinking, since the fund was closed, and it's now about 150% larger than it was in 1993.....What's the real explanation for reopening Strong Common Stock?.....It's easy: Strong is rolling out a new line of six broker-sold, load funds, and Common Stock is one of them.....Closed, Strong Common Stock has been a mediocre performer.....It's difficult to see how performance will improve once new money starts flooding in.....Meanwhile, loyal and patient fund investors get screwed in the name of asset-gathering.
  "Strong's Decision to Load Up Raises Questions," Paul Herbert, Morningstar.com, September 22, 2000
  
  
  
• You want style boxes, we'll give you style boxes: Harris Investment Management, manager of the Harris Insight funds, is launching three new growth-stock funds that it fully expects to perform poorly.....According to the president of Harris, the new funds are being launched mainly to acquire a three-year track record, even though Harris expects the growth style of investing to be out of favor for the next two or three years.....If the funds merely outperform their peer group, management says it will be happy.
  Barron's, Michael Santoli, July 3, 2000
  
  
  
• Lee Munder's chauffeur is confused: A firm called Munder Capital Management is advertising a new closed-end venture capital fund (Munder@Vantage), and the driver doesn't know if this new offering comes from the guy in the back seat or not.....The confusion is understandable.....Some time ago, Munder sold his interest in Munder Capital Management, and now he's started a new firm, Lee Munder Capital Group.....In addition to confusing his household staff, Lee Munder (the person) is verbally sparring with the old Munder firm over who was responsible for the track record of the Munder NetNet fund.....Munder (the person) acknowledges that he had little to do with the day-to-day operations of Munder NetNet, and nobody at the fund can recall a single stock pick that came from Mr. Munder.....Still, Mr. Munder is starting his own Internet fund, and he wants to make sure that he gets the benefit of his "reputation" and "legacy".....FundAlarm thinks this is only fair.....In fact, if anyone knows Mr. Munder's golf handicap, please let us know, and we'll also set the record straight on that.
  "Staking Claims: Two Firms Vie To Take Credit For Hot Fund," Charles Gasparino and Aaron Lucchetti, The Wall Street Journal, September 18, 2000
  
  
  
• These guys are tough: The new Domini Social Bond Fund refuses to invest in U.S. Treasury bills, since Treasury bills indirectly finance weapons purchases.....There are just a handful of other socially responsible bond funds: Calvert Social Investment Bond, Aquinas Fixed Income, MMA Praxis Intermediate Income, and two Parnassus funds (Fixed Income and California Tax-Exempt).....We haven't checked, but some probably do invest in T-bills.
  
  
  
• Power to the people! Canadian authorities have killed a proposal to tax the unrealized gains in U.S. funds owned by Canadian investors.....Here at FundAlarm, we got on the bandwagon by suggesting that U.S. investors boycott Molson beer, which at least one Canadian newspaper seems to have taken seriously.....Much of the real credit, however, belongs to the homegrown Web site of "Bylo Selhi," who helped rouse the peace-loving Canadians into an e-mail and letter writing frenzy.....Kudos to Mr. Selhi.
  
  
  

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