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To: GST who wrote (102677)	5/3/2000 9:39:00 AM
From: Bill Harmond	Respond to of 164684

That's not my point, GST. I contend you would have said investing last October was folly, too.

To: GST who wrote (102677)	5/3/2000 10:23:00 AM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164684

Gst, >NEW YORK (AP) - The average individual investor is frequently stereotyped as a raw speculator who chases whatever stock is hot on any given day. StockJungle.com's Community Intelligence Fund, an innovative new mutual fund whose stock portfolio is based solely on the recommendations of amateur investors, is going a long way toward debunking that myth. The fund has outperformed all the major stock indexes so far in 2000, as well as many of the most popular U.S. funds. Indeed, the benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 Index is just about breaking even, while both the Dow Jones industrial average and the Nasdaq composite index have lost ground since Jan. 1. And two of the largest actively managed funds - Fidelity's Magellan and Vanguard's Windsor II - aren't faring much better. Magellan, the world's largest fund with $109 billion in assets, was up just 0.33 percent as of April 30. And the $23 billion Windsor II fund was up 0.72 percent, according to Lipper Inc., a New York firm that tracks fund performance. The tiny $3.6 million Community Intelligence fund, meanwhile, has risen 29 percent this year, and 47 percent since its inception in November. Not bad for an idea many fund analysts wrote off as a gimmick. ``I attribute it to the smart people in our community,'' said StockJungle.com chief investment officer Michael Petrino. Petrino was referring to the amateur stock pickers who sign on to StockJungle.com's Web site to offer their recommendations. Obviously, not every recommendation makes its way into Community Intelligence's portfolio. But every stock that is eventually selected for inclusion was originally recommended by an armchair analyst. Similar to a traditional mutual fund, all final investment decisions are made by a professional fund manager. A number of newer funds have been pummeled in the past few weeks, victims of belated attempts to capture the triple-digit returns seen in recent years by funds that focus primarily on new Internet companies. Although Community Intelligence caters to an online audience, the recommendations offered on StockJungle's Web site have leaned more toward computer hardware and semiconductor stocks, according to Petrino. Eighty-two percent of the stocks held in the fund fall into the technology sector. But few could be considered pure Internet companies, which are generally defined as those that derive most of their revenues from their online operations. Consequently, the Community Intelligence fund was able to avoid the sharp downturns experienced by a number of other newer funds that had joined the game late and gambled on the ongoing success of the Internet sector. Another of StockJungle.com's new funds - the Pure Play Internet fund - wasn't so lucky. That fund is down 25 percent this year. But it's the Community Intelligence fund that has captured the attention of investors in general. Petrino said he and the fund's other professional advisers sifted through 2,000 recommendations a month ago, the last time several new stocks were added in a process known as rebalancing. ``The community has given us good recommendations to choose from,'' he said. A close look at the fund's 50 holdings could help dispel the myth that amateur investors do little more than chase hot stocks with little thought toward the companies in which they invest. Upstart Internet companies such as Amazon.com and eBay are nowhere to be found. Instead, Community Intelligence's top five holdings - Oracle, Sun Microsystems, EMC, Applied Micro Circuits and Motorola - are all profitable, well-established companies. Petrino acknowledged that many of StockJungle.com's amateur analysts likely based their recommendations on recent movements in the stock market, a strategy known as momentum investing and one criticized by many professional investors. But Petrino said momentum investing is an unavoidable dynamic. ``It's really no different than how Wall Street works,'' he said. ``The professional fund managers also jump into a sector while it's hot, and that creates momentum. It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy.'' On the Net: StockJungle.com's site, www.stockjungle.com AP-NY-05-03-00 0745EDT