Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.bonus From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: bonus Mon, Feb 24 1992 Date: Mon, 24 Feb 92 06:25:44 EST Message-ID: BONUS: Investment advice sails offshore USA TODAY Update Feb. 24, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network Sure, your stockbroker may have good stock-market research. It may even have plush offices and free coffee. But does your broker let you chat economics with Louis Rukeyser and John Templeton over champagne cocktails? Probably not. Can you run upstairs after and get a terrific tan? Doubtful. Can you sit in your broker's dining room and munch jumbo shrimp while the Virgin Islands slide by? Hardly. Welcome to personal finances in paradise, a seven-day investment seminar at sea. WHAT CAN YOU LEARN FROM THE SEMINAR? Aside from obvious advantages such as meticulous service, plentiful food, tropical sun and fabulous scenery, the 10 speakers on board for the seminar can teach you about investing in everything from mutual funds to Nevada gold mines and offshore trusts. So, too, can your fellow attendees - sometimes better than the experts. Landlocked or floating, plush or spartan, investment seminars are again soaring in popularity after a near-death experience in the late '80s. HAS THE FLAVOR OF THE SEMINARS CHANGED OVER THE YEARS? "I always used to get a question that I never get now," says Rukeyser, host of Wall $treet Week, as he sits on a sofa by one of the ship's brassrailed stairways. "It's, `What about gold?' " When investment seminars began to boom in the late '70s and early '80s, they tended to cater to the hard-money, gold-bug crowd. Wall Street didn't provide much advice on gold, then the best investment for beating inflation or making money. Investment seminars ballooned into the vacuum. THEN WHAT HAPPENED? Gold prices began plunging after 1980. In 1986, Congress axed the provision that allowed investors to deduct most of the cost of such seminars as investment expenses. The 1987 stock-market crash dealt another blow. But the gap persisted between the information and education that Wall Street brokerages provide and what individual investors really want and need to know. The popularity of do-it-yourself investment vehicles such as no-load mutual funds and discount stock brokerages, which don't dispense advice or research, has widened that gap. HAVE THE SEMINARS BEEN RETOOLED? At today's seminars, you won't find speakers sporting gold-nugget neck chains and predicting $6,000-an-ounce gold and $2,000-an-ounce silver. Instead, you'll find exhibits for mainstream mutual-fund companies and hear speakers from nationally known investment-advisory services. The workshops focus on investment basics such as stocks, bonds, trusts and estate planning. ARE THE SEMINARS POPULAR? The redirected seminars are gaining popularity, particularly with older investors, who make up most of this cruise seminar's enrollment of 200. Typical attendance on ISI investment cruises has roughly doubled in the past couple of years. ISI's three-day Florida Convention and Money Show early this month brought in 3,800 investors. WHAT HAS ADDED TO THE TREND? The plunge in interest rates since summer. At 4% or less, savings rates are the lowest in decades. People are eager to explore how to get decent returns again. The hot stock market, up 20% last year and 3.5% this year, based on the Dow Jones industrial average, also has people hungry for knowledge. All that is gasoline on the investment-seminar fire. HOW'S ATTENDANCE AT THE INVESTMENT SEMINARS? "Attendance is up strongly over the last four months, and it's still climbing," says James Cloonan, president of the American Association of Independent Investors. AAII will run about 40 investment seminars nationwide this year. Each seminar attracts about 100 people. And the granddaddy of all investment seminars, Jim Blanchard's New Orleans Investment Conference, is seeing increased interest, too. Attendance at the conference in October rose to 1,500 from 1,100 in 1990. WHO ATTENDS THESE SEMINARS? Most seminar attendees start with a good grasp of the market. "The people who attend the seminars are not unsophisticated," Rukeyser says. "They're not silly or gullible. They come to get a handle on the economy and different investment philosophies." Jim and and Mary Jo Lake of Tucson, Ariz., have been going to investment conferences since 1975, although they say they haven't bought anything on a specific recommendation they've got. "People ask me what I get out the conferences, and I say I'm not sure," Jim Lake says. "But I get some ideas and hear what's going on. You get a good cross-section of opinions." ARE THERE ANY SUCCESS STORIES? Some of the speakers on the Westerdam would do well asking Jim Lake's opinion. In 1973, he bought Pic'N'Save for $4.50 a share. Taking the stock's splits into account, that's the equivalent of 22 cents a share. Pic'N'Save now sells for $22 a share. Mary Jo Lake trades stocks, too. Three years ago, she noticed a new business in town called Mail Boxes, Etc. and decided to add it to her portfolio. The stock has tripled in value since she bought it. DO COUPLES SOMETIMES GO TOGETHER? Ed Harris and his wife, Mary, 82, are attending the cruise's sessions together. Harris has had more experience with the market than most people on Wall Street. Harris, 88, bought his first stock, General Motors, in the 1920s. "It went up 10 or 15 points, and that started it for me," he says. Now, he plays in the risky stock-options market. "I don't let it carry me away. But it keeps you awake - or alive." At others, they have worked as a team - sometimes splitting up to cover twice as many seminars. Evenings, they'd share notes. IS INVESTMENT INFORMATION THE ONLY ATTRACTION AT THE SEMINARS? Brenda and Neil Donahue, 52 and 71, respectively, enjoyed the seminar on the Westerdam. But they also came for vacation, staying on at Nassau in the Bahamas. "It is very romantic," Brenda says, "like a third honeymoon." WHAT'S IN IT FOR THE GUEST SPEAKERS? For many investment-newsletter editors, the workshops and exhibition halls are a good way to gain exposure. It's hard work, though. "It's selling at retail," says Sheldon Jacobs, editor of The No-Load Mutual Fund Investor. "I can reach more people with an ad or a direct mailing." Money managers, however, find the seminars a great way to sell their services. "We don't hire salesmen, and it's a good way to expose what we do," says John Lee, president of 10-Prime Choices, a money-management firm in Houston. And the speakers go to learn something, too. "I like to hear what others are saying," says Charles Allmon, editor of Growth Fund Guide and a seminar speaker since the late 1970s. Bonus Editor: Michele Coleman. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. 08:0002240000T2030 US01- R - USA-TODAY............................. A T2030 02-24 0000 cc cc Feb. 24, 1992 This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM