[Very LONG] Yeah, I already tried to push ISDEX to the major fund families but nothing's happened yet. I got discouraged and gave up. I still think it's quite tragic that all the major fund families are so hopelessly provincial to consider starting an ISDEX tracker. It's a no-brainer really. But none of the established players want to be Internet pioneers. Which is why the no-names who did recognize the revolution are now becoming the big boys on the street.
Well, anyways, here's the extremely long message I posted to various forums a few months ago trying to rally support for an ISDEX-tracking fund:
George Nichols - 06:48pm Feb 10, 1999 EDT (210.)
Internet Fund/Indices News @
netconductor.com
Less talk, more action NOW!
Dear Steve, and anyone else interested:
Hello, I'm a longtime Net geek and all of my $ is in Net stocks. For 1.5
years and counting, my first choice for investing would be an ISDEX
fund. Alas, it did not exist! So while I've got all of my $ in WWWFX
instead, I'm wondering how much longer until an ISDEX fund can get off
the ground.
ISDEX is a dinosaur in Internet age (4/96 inception?). You started a
thread way back in october seeking support for a ISDEX fund, and in the
meantime the sector has seen absolutely dramatic gains. A lot of wealth
was created but no ISDEX fund to partake in the market gains. The
ISDEX support thread started off with a boom (had 187 posts in
November 2nd - 30 = avg. 6.5 posts per day) but since December 1st
only 22 posts (0.3 posts per day). At this rate, by the time you get 1000
we will all be dead, the market cap for the Net sector will be $100
trillion, and there will be dozens of Net Index Funds.
I don't think you should wait until you get 1000 votes. But if you find it
really necessary, I can spread the word to various forums and guarantee
you another 20-50 posts within the next 2-3 weeks.
Steve, you are seeking a "Fidelity or Vanguard or similar sized group who
has the integrity and reach to do it justice...a top mutual fund group" I can
think of 15-20 fund families that can reasonably fit this definition. A partial
list of large/respected families include: Rydex, Dreyfus, T. Rowe Price,
Invesco, Janus, Rbrtsn Stphns, Pimco, Smith Barney, Scudder, Goldman
Sachs, etc. Vanguard is clearly the eminent choice for index funds of any
kind. However, I've already emailed them about this and they are not
interested. Moreover, I was shocked to read a recent article saying that
they will not even consider starting a NASDAQ100, making that sector
sound like a high-flying fad not worthy of consideration.
Steve, all of these major fund families have been aware of ISDEX for
several months or years now. Starting an ISDEX fund is a no-brainer. If
these traditional fund families continue to turn their noses to us, we should
accept it as a challenge rather then sit on our hands waiting for the
Internet to finally uproot them from their old-fashioned line of thinking. If
Wall Street continues to scoff, a bunch of us could help create a
movement to start one ourselves - it would be exciting and make an
interesting story. I kid you not. In fact, several of us at Silicon Investor
seriously considered starting a NASDAQ100 fund since only one exists
and that fund is unavailable to most investors ($25,000 minimum).
Although we abandoned the idea, I learned a lot about creating a fund.
The steps necessary are detailed at
Message 7337326
There has been a frenzy of purchases with the Net funds (and pseudo
"Net" funds) that exist now. And competition (more funds) is finally
appearing in great numbers: PHLX/TheStreet.com options, Monument
Fund, Guinness Flight Wired Index, Munder NetNet, WWWFX,
WWIFX, Nuveen E-commerce UIT, and there are more in the pipeline.
Waiting even a moment longer is a foolish mistake.
I wonder if anyone comprehends the overwhelming demand for such a
fund. Let me illustrate with a vivid example - Monument Internet Fund.
The Monument Funds company did not even exist until a year ago. And
when they did debut, they offered two very unusual funds. They both
were geographically restricted to investing in Washington DC based
stocks. This is crazy, who would want to invest in that? The only category
more limiting for returns are "socially conscious" funds, but at least they
have a large niche market. But this no-name company with its two
pathetic funds just opened their Internet Fund. A recent Smartmoney.com
article noted that their Internet fund started up with almost no publicity
and levies a hefty 4.75% sales charge, yet the inflow into the fund has
been dramatic.
- Netconductor.com |
