Not your grandfather's funds anymore
From The Wall Street Journal
Conservative "grandfatherly" investors have favored the safe harbor and steady dividends of utility funds for some time, but telecommunications has transformed this sector into flashy go-go growth funds. Telecommunications, cable and indirect Internet stocks on average represent about 40% of the holdings in the 38 utility funds followed by Morningstar. Telecommunication stocks trade at higher prices than electric or energy stocks and are more volatile. This year, utility funds are twice as volatile as they were in 1995,  Morningstar said. As a result, dividends have been yielding less income than they did three years ago. Utility funds on average paid out 1.93% for the 12-month period ended Oct. 31, compared with 2.78% in the year-earlier period, according to Wiesenberger Thomson Financial.

Putting VC in the hands of the people
From The Los Angeles Times
Venture capital isn't only for the billionaire boys club anymore. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, one of the leading venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, said it is forming $500-million fund, the first that would enable small investors to take part in venture capital. MeVC.com is to to set up the MeVC Draper Fisher Jurvetson Fund I, which is expected to be the first in a series of such portfolios. The fund, to open in several months, has a minimum investment of $5,000, but the individual must either have a net worth of $150,000 or a net worth of $50,000 and make $50,000 a year. It will be offered initially at $25 a share and then trade as a closed-end mutual fund on the New York Stock Exchange.

Inflows push tech up
From TheStreet.com
Mutual fund investors are pushing billions of dollars into the technology sector, and portfolio managers have to invest that money somewhere. In 1999, investors stuffed $17.8 billion into tech funds through the end of October, according to Financial Research Corp. That's a record -- the next-best year is 1995, when $4.4 billion flowed into the sector. That influx of capital explains the rise of the Nasdaq Composite Index, which has boosed 20% in the last month and 80% over the last year. The money momentum shows no signs of slowing. The $2.7 billion invested in the tech sector during October -- the newest data -- is the most ever for a single month.

Playing to the public
From TheStreet.com
StockJungle.com, the upstart Culver City, Calif.-based firm is announcing "Hot Hands," a program that has been under way for almost a month and offers visitors to its website $50 (writer's note: they should be able to do better than that!) for their best stock ideas. Every day, five amateur portfolios with the best three-month performance records get the cash award. StockJungle.com launched the program, the website and four mutual funds, on Nov. 18. One of the funds, Community Intelligence, calls for its pro managers to select stocks strictly from among those suggested by amateurs. Paying the public to pick stocks for its mutual fund is one way StockJungle.com can draw attention to its site and sell shares in its Community Intelligence, Pure Play Internet or Market Leaders (large-cap growth) funds. All of these funds have less than $1 million in assets.  

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