Well, if Greg is looking for good advice, he should follow that of his mother's and the opposite of what he was pushing a little while ago. On average one can beat the S&P 500 (and an index tied to it, the next best way to go) by buying a deeply discounted closed-end fund and holding it.
BTW, it may well be that we have seen the bottom of the market. Japan has made a bank bailout deal finally, which is pleasing the Asian markets (as well as the US's). The other hidden factor, not mentioned by anybody recently, behind the Fed's interest rate cut has to do with China. It is coming out that this was coordinated with Tokyo and it was planned that the yen should go up and the US dollar down. Given the peg of the Chinese yuan/renmimbi to the dollar, this effectively devalues the Chinese currency vis a vis the yen, something the Chinese have wanted and threatened to do on their own. As was noted earlier on this list, that would have triggered a new round of tanking on the Asian markets. That now looks unlikely.
Of course this may all still unravel and we may still get a really big crash later this month or beyond. Barkley Rosser On Tue, 13 Oct 1998 10:41:23 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Greg Nowell wrote:
>
> >3. Forbes publishes every August and early Septembrer
> >its ratings of mutual funds and closed end funds
> >(which I think was Sept.; the other was early August).
> >I personally think this is one of the better ratings
> >out there (money magazine does it, WSJ does it too, I
> >think quarterly and annually) because rather than rate
> >over a specific *time* they rate over *two complete up
> >and down cycles.*
> >
> >4. Conservative financial advice is: stick with funds,
> >not specific stocks, and stick with funds that have
> >gotten good ratings in Forbes.
>
> I'm deeply skeptical of these mutual fund rating charts. It is almost
> impossible to beat the market over the long term, and there's no reason why
> a fund that has done well in the past should do well in the future. In
> fact, given fees and trading costs, it's almost impossible to match the
> market. If you must consort with stocks, the best advice is probably to
> stick with an index fund and don't try to trade it. Even better advice, of
> course, is to organize and smash the capitalist state, but that's another
> story.
>
> Doug
>
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu