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To: hunchback who wrote (78865)	12/9/1999 11:01:00 AM
From: flatsville	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86076

hunch--I wonder if Douglas County and City of Omaha will be able to make their bond payments and IRS trust fund tax deposits (withholding) using beer barter. (I wonder when Moody's will begin caring about this situation.) So much for a year for testing...so much for a three day bump in the road...Got contingency plans? omaha.com This is my favorite part: >>>The accounting system used by Douglas County and the City of Omaha was expected to be up and working today after crashing Sunday when new Y2K-compliant applications were switched from the testing to the production mode. Mike Carpenter, director of information services, said the problem was not related to the Y2K conversion, but to the transfer of programs and data. Carpenter had expected the computer system to be working by late Tuesday afternoon, but it wasn't. County Clerk Tom Cavanaugh and County Treasurer Julie Haney, both primary users of the system for the county, described the problem as a crisis. They said information services did not notify their offices of the problem.<<

To: hunchback who wrote (78865)	1/30/2000 6:50:00 AM
From: re3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86076

from the toronto star jan 30/2000: January Barometer set to predict a weeping year on Wall Street As January goes, so goes the rest of the year,' says The Stock Traders Almanac, which calls this indicator the January Barometer. According to the 1983 edition of the almanac, the barometer was wrong only twice in the 32 years spanning 1950 to 1982. That works out to an outstanding 87 per cent batting average. According to the 2000 edition, the barometer is still a reliable indicator. In the 20 years 1980 to 1999, the indicator was wrong only six times. That's a batting average of 70 per cent. The almanac uses the Dow Jones industrial average as the benchmark in the January Barometer. That average of 30 blue-chip stocks closed out the year at 11,497. On Friday the Dow slid 289 points to close at 10,739. If the Dow is going to give us a positive signal for the year by closing out January higher than the widely watched benchmark began, it has the impossible task of climbing 765 points. That's something to think about today if you are attending the last day of the Financial Forum at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. The doors are open at 9 a.m. and the four-day event ends at 6 p.m. The forum provides plenty of tools to help select the next big mutual fund winners. Half of the 14 free seminars scheduled today are fund-related. You can choose from a plentiful supply of free glossy fund literature. The show atmosphere could also induce you to purchase one of those annual fund guide books that appear this time of year. I would pass on the fund-guide purchase, though. These guides base their fund selections on tables of old performance data, and the relevance of that fades quickly in the fast markets of today. Quarterly updates in print or on a Web site would help solve the problem. In any case, I think the big mistake most investors make in selecting funds is in chasing past performance. Investors were bagged by the hot Altamira Equity fund in 1997 and again by the hot AIC Advantage Fund in 1998. One fund guidebook written by Ranga Chand refers to funds with recent hot past returns as ``heavy hitters.' If one must use corny baseball allusions with regard to fund selection, keep in mind that anyone can identify a heavy hitter when the season ends. I want to pick the potential heavy hitter in spring training. I think weekly charts can do the job for us. The ones you're looking at this week show weekly closes of the CIBC European Equity Fund and the lower Green Line Science & Technology Fund. They're both plotted on logarithmic scales, which visually display percentage increases and decreases in the prices of the funds, rather than dollar changes. Note that both funds shared a significant top, identified as point A, in July, 1998. Note also that both crashed in October, 1998. Then, however, the Green Line fund made a quick move, identified as point B, through the former high. That was the buy signal for that fund. Now, about 14 months later, the fund can be classed as a heavy hitter. Other funds that would show a similar pattern include 20/20 Aggressive Equity, AGF Japan, BPI Global Small Companies and Universal Japan. I think they are now high-risk following their big run-up. A corrective down-leg is overdue. Now let's take another look at today's chart for the CIBC European Equity Fund, which shows a recent move at point B above the July, 1998, high marked A. This fund has spent about 14 months in a corrective cycle after the rapid 1997 advance. I think this fund is now low-risk and could be next year's heavy hitter. Other funds to watch for early breakouts would be the AIM Global Health Science Fund on a weekly close over the January, 1999, high of about $18.90; Green Line Resource Fund posting a weekly close over the mid-summer high of $8.90; and the Ivy Canadian Fund posting a weekly close of $21, above the highs of mid-1999. Some other funds have recently posted breakouts and are in the early stages of a new advance. Look at Clean Environment Equity, Fidelity European and Spectrum United Canadian Growth. I would avoid the technology or ``click' stocks. BCE Inc.'s decision to spin off Nortel Networks Corp. in a convenient stock split could be the beginning of a series of selling in the group. If you want exposure to the new-economy, consider the health and bio-tech stocks. They lag the ``click' stocks and may be lower risk. The recent new round of buying in bank stocks is a sign that nervous money is moving to a defensive sector, away from the ``heavy hitters.' --------------------------------------------------------------------------------