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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Thomas M. who wrote (84469)	10/21/2000 10:37:14 AM
From: Mike M2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Thomas, Heartland serves to illustrate the dangers of credit excesses. mike

To: Thomas M. who wrote (84469)	10/22/2000 7:06:35 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Thomas, A few years back, I pitched the idea of a modified Maximum Income Fund to several mutual fund cos. I say modified, because I couldn't use paired trading or most of the option spreads or short sales that I use in my non-fund portfolios. Also, I couldn't play the indices or currencies in a fund portfolio. However, I would use Treasury bonds and notes with either covered calls or spread conversions, stocks with covered calls or spread conversions, and, perhaps, deeply discounted closed end income funds. Every fund co. came back with nearly exactly the same response: "high yield, true, but too much risk for our customers." I was dumbfounded as the same cos. readily put senior citizens, widows and orphans into the worst credits on the market to chase dubious current yields. I could have and did achieve much higher yields at much lower risk. Anyhoo, to make a long story even longer, one of the firms that told me I was taking too much risk was Heartland. The last time I checked, my Treasury and equity spreads have not had a 40-75% writeoff of principal. <VBG> My worst year beat their best years, by a multiple of three to four times. Oh, well, nobody said fund management companies had any brains.