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

To: Tapcon who wrote (89387)	2/10/2001 1:24:39 PM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 132070

(from the Mailbag section of Barron's) The Lost Honeymoon To the Editor: After searching through your January 29 issue in search of closed-end fund discounts and premiums, I finally paid attention to the dastardly "To Our Readers" note indicating that the list wouldn't appear. Let's see, you had room to run pictures of four members of the Roundtable, who, Meryl Buchanan the notable exception, are hardly eye candy. You also had plenty of room to give us quotes on variable annuities (big yawn), plus pages of hedgefund performance for the 12 wealthy people gullible enough to use such products. But for closed-ends -- the one consistent source of investment bargains, week after week, which can be bought by modest and well-heeled investors alike -- you have no room at the inn? Shame! I still love Barron's most of the time, but the honeymoon is over. MICHAEL D. BURKE Houston We're sorry. From time to time, for production reasons, we can't include all of our usual stats. And regardless of what we omit, someone is unhappy. In fact, some annuity and hedge-fund fans just might consider closed-ends big yawns. And not eye candy, either --EDITOR.

To: Tapcon who wrote (89387)	2/10/2001 4:16:55 PM
From: Knighty Tin	Respond to of 132070

Paul, My tendency is to always ride it out if the fundamentals haven't changed. Selling it after a move the wrong way and near expiration yields almost nothing in the way of cash. And a few times, these suckers have come to life on the last couple of days until expiration. I remember one called Santa Fe Energy back in the early 80s. The stock declined and my calls were looking kind of puny. All of my quant. competition in the options pits were selling overpriced out of the money, near term calls, the very ones I owned, and pointing their fingers at me like I was the class idiot. Then, not long before they perspired worthless, the co. announced that it was being acquired at a handsome price. My now unemployed buddies stopped laughing. <g> Unfortunately, it turned out that there was a lot of insider trading in the options and it caused a huge scandal on the P-Coast exchange. Some folks went to prison. But, hey, a win is a win in my book. I just thought the stock was cheap when I bought my calls. <g>