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Pastimes : The Justa & Lars Honors Bob Brinker Investment Club -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (13072)	4/9/2000 11:11:00 AM
From: Jeffrey D	Respond to of 15132

One mutual fund manager's story of the decade of the 90s. Jeff << "Mutual-fund manager Henry Van der Eb hasn't taken a real vacation in seven years. He arises at the monastic hour of 4:30 a.m. and toils until early evening, following every twist and turn of the U.S. economy and different financial markets. Many a Saturday and almost every Sunday find him at his suburban Chicago office, alone and deeply engrossed in the piles of financial publications, newsletters and reports that he doesn't have time to read during the week. Not that this arduous routine has yielded much of a payoff in recent years. For as a manager of the no-load Mathers Fund (now Gabelli Mathers fund by virtue of its acquisition by the Gabelli organization last summer), Van der Eb has missed out on the once-in-a-lifetime bull market by holding large cash positions and offsetting his long stock holdings with short hedges in stock-index futures. His performance in the 'Nineties was brutal, destroying a stellar record built in prior years. The S&P 500 Index was up 432%, while Mathers rose a mere 32% for a compound annual return of just 2.8% over the decade. As a consequence, hemorrhaging redemptions have driven the fund's assets under management from a high of $530 million in 1993 to a recent $102 million. Yet Van der Eb is a survivor. Perhaps most amazingly, he seems remarkably composed in the face of the huge opportunity loss he and his shareholders have suffered for being so out of step for so long (much of his net worth is invested in Mathers). Nor does he display the shrill dogmatism, bitterness or twisted cynicism that typify the chronic bear crowd. "Of course, it bothers me that I've been wrong about the market for the past 10 years, but I like to think I've offered our investors solid insurance coverage against any number of potential calamities," he observes with a certain detached resignation in an interview in his Bannockburn, Illinois, office. "Looking ahead, I feel our fund holders will be well served by staying in an actively managed bear fund like ours. The stock market's current Baby Boomer mania can't last much longer." (Last summer, Mario Gabelli, the Gabelli organization's chief, said he regarded the addition of Mathers to his 30-mutual-fund stable as a "straw-hat-in-January" purchase.)"

To: Justa Werkenstiff who wrote (13072)	4/9/2000 4:18:00 PM
From: Justa Werkenstiff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15132

China says Taiwan pushing towards "abyss of war" BEIJING, April 9 (Reuters) - Chinese state media said on Sunday that Taiwan's vice president-elect Annette Lu was looking to carry the island into an "abyss of war" by making pro-independence remarks. "It's clear she wants to push the people of Taiwan into the abyss of war," the People's Daily said in an advance release of a commentary scheduled for publication on Monday. State media began lambasting Lu on Friday after she was quoted making "separatist" remarks in an interview with a Hong Kong television station. The People's Daily, the flagship Communist Party newspaper, quoted Lu saying "Taiwan sovereignty is independent," and that Taiwan and the mainland were close geographically but that history had made them distant relatives. The statements by Lu, a traditionally pro-independence politician elected last month to lead the estranged island along with President-elect Chen Shui-bian, have landed her in the cross-hairs of a nasty state media campaign. People's Daily and Xinhua news agency articles are peppered with pejoratives, calling Lu "perverse," "shameless," a "traitor" and "scum of the nation." Lu on Saturday called China's criticism a distortion of fact, saying she wanted to improve ties with Beijing. "I have been very consistent to what I had said during the election campaign -- that I am more than willing to improve cross-strait relations with greatest sincerity and goodwill," she was quoted as saying by state television. The blunt attack on Chen's independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party six weeks before its May 20 inauguration indicated that China's wait-and-see policy announced after the election was crumbling. Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen has called on President-elect Chen to give a "full response" to Beijing's demand he embrace the "one China" policy as a precondition for talks. A military newspaper has warned him to "think carefully." Beijing demands that Chen embrace the "one China" policy -- that Taiwan and the mainland are parts of a united China -- as a precondition for cross straits talks. Beijing threatens to invade if Taiwan declares independence or delays reconciliation talks. Chen has offered to hold talks with Chinese leaders, and said he is willing to discuss the "one China" policy. But so far he has refused to embrace Beijing's formula.