MutualFundWire.com: Odd Lots, October 4, 1999

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Monday, October 4, 1999

Odd Lots, October 4, 1999

Buffett wannabes
From Investment News
The investor of all investors seems to have been leading his followers astray. The dozen or so mutual funds that have heavily invested in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and then duplicated its holdings of financial and multinational consumer stocks are getting injured in the market. This year, Berkshire Hathaway's A shares are down 14.3%, trading at $60,000 as of Thursday, with the slumping financial sector major culprit.

Fledgling fund sued
From The Wall Street Journal
In less than two years after Allison Hines invested $50,000 in the newly launched ESC Strategic Value Fund the fund liquidated itself and failed to repay her 4.5%-of-assets front-end sales charge. In response, Hines filed suit alleging that the fund stating that it failed to provide sufficient information to let investors know if it would be around for the long-term. The case points to the dangers of investing in fledgling funds and the adequacy of information that many funds disclose in their prospectuses.

A silent roar
From The Wall Street Journal
This week Mellon Bank's Dreyfus unit will run four different commercials with no voice-overs. Alternative to its past campaigns that describe Dreyfus's line of about 160 mutual funds or detail its performance records, the ads, aimed squarely at promoting the Dreyfus brand, features only the company's signature lions darting around the African brush. The ads, created by Holland Mark Edmund Ingalls, a Boston advertising agency, is certain to provoke debate in the mutual fund world.

Funds in the Press

According to Joseph T. Keating, manager of the Kent International Growth fund, his index is not run-of-the-mill. In an interview with The Boston Globe, he explains that index funds have a self-fulfilling momentum because their market-cap weighting means investors are buying into past performance not much can be gained. In response he has created a way to avoid this type of situation.