New money flows
From The Wall Street Journal
New cash flowed into funds last month, but assets in stock funds fell with the market. Stock mutual funds pulled in a net $9.38 billion in September, up from a net $8.91 billion in August. Aggressive-growth stock funds and international stock funds led the way, said the ICI Thursday. The new money surprised many analysts given that major stock-market indexes fell in September. Yet, the market drop did stop total assets in mutual funds from rising. Total assets in stock funds dropped about 1.2% last month to $3.3 trillion from August, while overall assets in stock, bond and money-market mutual funds fell by 0.9% to $5.98 trillion after spending the summer above $6 trillion.

SEC likely to look into inappropriate pricing
From The Wall Street Journal
The SEC is examining pricing issues and is set to take a tougher look at mutual funds that aren't pricing appropriately, says the WSJ. The article explains the issue to investors. The bad news, according to the paper: Some funds buy high-interest loans made by banks to companies without credit ratings, or junk bonds. The loans they acquire often are not very liquid, and some funds, like Van Kampen Prime Rate, only periodically value these holdings. Other funds hold venture-capital investments, private placements and restricted securities, even if fairly small ones. When valuations are done some of these funds do the calculates themselves, rather than using outside pricing services.

Lynch, Rickles & Tomlin Pay
From The Boston Globe
Everyone loves to hate Fidelity's ad campaign featuring Peter Lynch and comedians Don Rickles and Lilly Tomlin. Everyone except Steve Cone, Fidelity's president of customer marketing and development. Cone told a gathering that the ads developed by Hill Holliday Connors Cosmopulos of Boston have correlated with a "ten-fold" rise in phone and Web traffic, said Cone. He also revealed that Fidelity will spend $750 million -- more than in all 1998 -- on ads over the next three months. The current tagline: "We help you invest responsibly."

Beardstown Ladies lose in court
From The Boston Globe
No, you can't make certifiable false claims on a book jacket. Or so ruled California's First Appellate District Court yesterday. The case pits Buena Vista Books Inc., the publishing arm of the Walt Disney Corp., and publisher of the Beardstown Ladies against Russell Keimer. Keimer claims that the ads blurbs tout an exaggerated track record and should be removed (one example: "Learn how to outperform mutual funds and professional money managers 3 to 1"). He also wants Disney to return all profits from the book. Disney won the first round of the case when it used the First Amendment to defend its right to free, if misleading, speech. The appeals judge overruled the earlier decision saying that the book jacket fell under commercial speech.

Y2K panic and how it can work for investors
From CBS MarketWatch
One investor has reacted to Y2K fears by selling all of the stocks in his million-dollar portfolio and putting the cash in a CD. Paul Farrell explores the reasoning behind the decision, with the conclusion that there are many investors making similar decisions, if on a smaller scale. If such is the case, look for a "January effect" of huge proportions, with investors looking to get back in to the markets, and money managers on a buying spree as well. Farrell lists a few funds that look to benefit from the inflows early next year -- assuming the meteor misses, that is. 

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