Wednesday, March 17, 1999
Investors trying to keep focused
BY JOHN ECKBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Stock market player Reif Uihlein got a sweet shiver Tuesday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average popped above 10,000.
Or maybe it was just a plain old shiver, as in, is this gravy train running out of tracks?
“It does make you somewhat squeamish,” said Mr. Uihlein, a stock market investor for six years. "“There's always that conservative side that maybe you should sell part of your holdings and find some other movers.”
Mr. Uihlein, owner of WRU and Associates, a manufacturer's representative for health care products and equipment, was like thousands of local investors Tuesday as the Dow hit 10,000 before drifting below the magic mark.
“The average investor thinks the Dow is the end of the world,” said Mr. Uihlein, a 47-year-old Anderson Township resident. “It's only 30 stocks. It doesn't really represent the market.”
Savvy and rookie investors alike realized Tuesday that not every wave delivers a wallop and the Dow at 10,000 is no different.
Attorney David S. Wash ington Jr., a partner at Rendigs, Fry, Kiely & Dennis, shrugged off the milestone as a market move that had little impact on his life. “You know, the market is just something that's out there,” said Mr. Washington, an investor for five years with a portfolio he estimated at $12,000. “I don't check my holdings every day and I don't buy every day. It's just something that's out there.”
Andrew Springer, an investor and owner of VS Holdings LLC, a Roselawn firm involved in customer profitability consulting and data warehousing, follows the Dow for what it might portend. “It will trickle over to other sectors,” he said. “But the Dow at 10,000 does not mean a whole lot to me. My holdings are in technology.”
Selling a stock is not in William Bradford Marsh's lexicon. He bought his first share during the Great Depression, when few had the stomach or cash for Wall Street. Since then, he can recall only one instance of selling a stock. He was not worried about the Depression at his first buy.
“I never paid any attention to that,” said Mr. Marsh, 88. “Things have to go on. I was looking at investments in things that (served the) primary needs of folks.”
Mr. Marsh's granddaughter Suanne Luhn is a bond manager at Bahl & Gaynor.
She said the long-term slide in interest rates throughout the 1980s and '90s has been as dramatic a change as the stock market's meteoric rise during the same period. “The two go hand in hand,” she said.
When Ms. Luhn got into the business in 1977, the stock market was stuck in a protracted bear market and interest rates were rising into double digits. “People that make their vast fortunes don't make it in bonds,” she said. “They make it in stocks.”
Since the Aug. 31, 1998, stock market swoon, when she lost an estimated $50,000 to $100,000 after the Dow dipped 512.61 points, Mary Lyn Goerke braced for the worst but did not change her strategy. She held onto equities and watched her retirement portfolio regain the August losses — and post profits of “a couple hundred thousand dollars” more.
“The Dow is a nice indicator on the mood of the market — and I happen to own several of the Dow stocks, so it's exciting to see it go up,” she said. “But because I hold a lot technology stocks, even if the Dow is having a not-so-good day, I still may be having a good day.”
Ms. Goerke is president of the OKI Tri-State Chapter of the National Association of Investors Corp., a national nonprofit organization that supports individual investors and investment clubs.
Dow-watching made investors forget NCAA college basketball picks for a day. Kirby Alexander, 41, of Silverton invested $32,000 in 16 companies two days ago and today has a nest egg of about $66,000.
As president of Coco-87, a software training and data-base development company, Mr. Alexander's market play is pure retirement fund.
“I'm looking long-range,” he said. “I plan on cashing in when I'm 60 years old and I'll just lay on the beach and drink Kahlua so I don't care what the market does now,” he said. “Up? Down? I don't care. If I see something I like, I'm going to buy it. My only problem is I don't have enough money to invest.”
Tom Fruth has been investing in the stock market for about 35 years.“The key here is to go where the action isn't,” said Mr. Fruth, a resident of Wyoming. “Everyone focuses on the Dow, everyone focuses on the top technology companies. You can't chase the action.”
Mr. Fruth, who owns rental property in Clifton, said he's made investing mistakes where he didn't do enough research into a company first. But the Internet and access to company information has made doing the homework easier than ever before.
High-tech stocks have a sheen but carry big warning flags, too, he said.
“Clearly, going on AOL (America Online) every night, you wonder why you don't own any of it,” he said. But he said he would probably be shaken out of tech stocks in a correction.
“"What kind of investor am I?' No one should enter the market without knowing that first,” he said.
Amy Higgins and Ursula Miller of The Enquirer contributed to this report.
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