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

To: marc ultra who wrote (2330)	12/2/1998 2:53:00 PM
From: Investor2	Respond to of 15132

RE: "test;ignore" Here's a test site I find useful. Subject 12305 Best wishes, I2

To: marc ultra who wrote (2330)	12/2/1998 2:56:00 PM
From: marc ultra	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15132

sentiment numbers bulls 56.9 bears 31.0 bulls/(bulls+bears)=64.73 Comment: down a bit from last week's 66.02 despite strong market last week. With this week's corrective action likely to be lower again next week and solidly in neutral zone and no impediment to a continuation of this strong bull leg Marc

To: marc ultra who wrote (2330)	12/5/1998 2:14:00 PM
From: marc ultra	Respond to of 15132

From Barron's, still may be plenty of cash in funds and they're not even talking about all the bonus, 401k and similar money that should be flowing in through January. I think surprises will continue to be to the up side. Article follows [ Mutual-fund managers almost invariably swear that they're always fully invested and never, ever try to time the market. So, what was the average U.S. equity fund doing with 9.8% of its assets? That's what Merrill Lynch's latest survey turned up. And it's the most since the Mideast crisis of 1990 that precipitated the Gulf War. And it's anywhere from $39 billion to $61 billion higher than normal, even after you adjust for yearend capital-gains distributions. But that cache of liquidity was built late last month, just as the bull market was roaring back to life, with the major market indexes about to make new highs. Of course, fund managers had claimed they were steadily drawing down their cash reserves to what they called "frictional" levels, or the bare minimum they needed to operate the fund and accommodate the usual day-to-day flows. So if managers have been fibbing just a bit about their cash positions, what's that mean? The way Merrill sees it, there's pent-up demand for equities. After all, this cash hoard is equal to 20 weeks of mutual-fund purchases of U.S. stocks. If portfolio managers are going to put some of that cash to work, the question then is when. Merrill contends that it's going to be sooner rather than later -- maybe even later this month. Pressure from financial advisers and consultants keeps most fund managers from holding cash for too long. Perhaps that cash already has been spent. Until recently, fund managers' motto had been that cash was indeed trash. Cash as a percentage of assets under management has been falling steadily by almost 0.8% a year for the past five years. Indeed, for a large part of 1998, cash levels got down as low as 4% of total assets. (The biggest flows -- 14% of the yearly total -- have come through during January over the past five years.) If you assume that portfolio managers get back to a 4.5% cash level, it looks like there's $61 billion sitting on the sidelines that will be put to work again in the market. If you want to be more conservative, assume that fund managers are going to hold 5.5%, instead of 4.5%, in cash. That would still imply excess cash of $39 billion that fund managers are going to have to put to work. Merrill mutual-fund analysts are convinced that fund managers are going to be pulling the trigger soon. Why? A recent ML Global Strategy study found that the number of managers planning to cut cash outnumbers those looking to raise cash by 33%. Probably a lot of them acted on those plans while the market was soaring prior to last week's pullback. Like most fund managers, retail investors also appear to be sitting on their own hoards of cash. They began pouring money into money-market funds during October when the market came down with a bad case of the wobblies. Although they've pushed some of that money back into equity funds, individuals are still holding an awfully big slug of cash in money- market funds. Indeed, for the week ending December 2, investors poured $15.3 billion dollars into money-market portfolios, according to AMG Data Services. If they also decided to plow that money back into U.S. equities, stock fund managers would feel even more pressure to get back into the market.] Marc