Show E2 The Salt Lake Tribune 1998 msmms : QDoes it make sense to have of the stock in my portfolio be the stock of my employer? I figure the company I work for is the one I know most about sc its probably better than investing in other less familiar companies AR Hartford Conn Our Mission: MV8 Although its very Foolish of you to consider how much you know about a company before buying any shares of it its just as important to diversify your holdings Bad things happen to good companies sometimes so you dont want to have most of your money invested in only one place Ideally a portfolio should hold between eight and 15 stocks Try to have no more than 33 percent of the portfolio value in any single company unless you know it really really well A To Inform to Amuse Dumbestlnvestment Thanks HAL st you buy a stock how is it to have the stock certificate? DM San Luis Obispo Calif Do you have an embarrassing lesson learned the hard way? Boil it down to 100 words (or less ) and send it to The Motley Fool co My Dumbest Investment Got one that worked? Submit to My Smartest Investment If we print yours you ll win a Fools cap! A You need to have the certificate if you plan to participate in Dividend Reinvestment Plans (DRIPs) where you buy stock directly from companies bypassing broker commissions For these youll need to own at least one share in your own name Name That Company founder gave my main product away as a freebie when he was selling soap in Chicago in the 1800s The ballpark My These days though most purchasers of stock dont get the actual certificates Instead the stocks are held in street name by the brokerage through which the shares were bought This means that the name on the certificate is technically that of ypur brokerage but within the brokerage youre registered as the owner weight of a single unit of this product is about three grams Early versions of it around the world have simpler in many ways to been made from resin paraffin and leaves but today mainly use a form of latex called chicle have the shares held by the brokerage Certificates dont have to be mailed out and returned for sale They can also be considered as collateral if you decide you want to trade on margin borrowing money from the brokerage I The product helps keep some people alert and has been supplied to American soldiers for most of this century Who am I? Got a question for the Fool? Send it in see Write to Us and to Help The Foot School Time for Kids Back in 1992 1 had a varied portfolio of six growth mutual funds that I selected with the help of a computer market-timin- g program In the fall the program advised me to sell everything I did Three months later it said to buy again I bought the same funds (now at higher prices) and ended up with fewer shares plus capital gains taxes to pay My observation: Timing stinks No one can do it reliably Instead pick a low-coindex fund and a few other good funds and invest for the long term Richard Danner Sierra Vista Ariz The Fool Responds: We agree In our book You Have More Than You Think (Simon & Schuster $25) we explain how roughly 90 percent of all managed stock mutual funds have underperformed the market over the past five years We prefer the index fund But if you can find ways to beat it with other funds amen Brother Richard QWhen Its What Is This Thing Called The Motley Fool? The Motley Fool Knowledge Is Good ' BUSINESS Sunday March 15 Want to make sure you end up in a nursing home with care? Get your kids involved in investing now Kids have a colossal edge over the rest of us when it comes to investing: They have time Consider that if youre 35 years old you might stay invested in stocks for only 30 to 40 years But if youre 15 youve got 50 to 60 years And thats a Brobdingnagian difference Heres an example: Lets say that Tiffany saves part of her allowance and flips burgers or in order to earn even baby-sit- s more She manages to save about $10 per week and invests $500 each year for 10 years from age 15 to 24 She socks it away in the stock market and forgets about it until age 65 (Well assume that the money in this example grows at 11 percent per year) Now her friend Trevor whos the same age puts off investing until much later Beginning at age 40 he invests $5000 each year first-cla- ss round-the-clo- Remember Shakespeare? Remember As You Like It"? In Elizabethan days Fools were the only people who could get away with telling the truth to the King or Queen The Motley Fool tells the truth about investing and hopes you'll laugh all the way to the bank Make Money You for 25 years Believe it or not Trevor wont be able to catch up with Tiffany Its mathematically true In her 10 years she saved and invested a total of $5000 and poor Trevor saved and invested a whopping $125000 By the time they turn 65 Tiffanys money will have grown to $705688 beating The Price of Price Protection Shares of Compaq Computer d Corp have fallen by nearly recently and some see trouble on the horizon for the personal computer (PQ industry To our eyes technology Armageddon isnt upon us Instead a healthy transition is under way for big despite some short-terone-thir- Trevors $634994 How can she possibly have come out ahead? Its because of time Tiffanys money grew for 50 years roughly twice as long as Trevors did And she was ahead of him every single year Mathematically speaking when you leave money to compound year after year the really big changes happen in the later years A nest egg may grow by just hundreds of dollars per year in the earlier years but in later years it may be growing by hundreds of thousands of dollars per year This example demonstrates that its never too early to start investing How much money you start with isnt as important as how many years you have to invest that money Next week well offer some suggestions on how to get your kids started and keep them interested pain Competitive pricing has left Compaq with too much inventory sitting in the channel (on reseller and distributor shelves) The problem isnt consumer demand for PCs which should continue to grow in its established 15 percent to 20 percent annual range but the way big PC companies handle their inventories Currently Compaq offers price protection meaning it credits distributors for the decline in a PCs price between the time they buy the inventory and the time the end-usbuys it Heres the rub: Prices of major PC components decline by 1 percent to 2 percent per week and it takes four to seven weeks to get a PC from Compaq to a customer Compaq is now switching to a channel assembly strategy like successful industry leader Dell Computer Corp Compaq will ship semiassembled PCs to distributors who will assemble them according to customer specifications Its also reducing price protection to two weeks time The big hit Compaq is taking to its earnings now will set it up for more normal growth later this year when these strategies are put into place er LAST WEEKS TRIVIA ANSWER My products are in more than 90 percent of American kitchens and many of them have even been sold in homes Home sales were a good idea because customers were having trouble figuring out how to use my products (Not everyone understood the burping sound my products made) I have more than 800000 salespeople Unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates have helped depress my revenues recently Despite this I raked in $12 billion in 1997 with 44 percent of sales coming from Europe and 13 percent from America Who am I? (Answer: Tupperware Corp) Write to Us! Send questions for Ask the Fool Dumbest (or Smartest) Investments (up to 100 words) and your Trivia entries to Foolfoolcom or via regular mail newspaper attn: The Motley Fool We want to hear Know the answer? Send it to us with Foolish Trivia on the top and you 'll be entered into a drawing for a nifty prize! co-thi- s Copyright Numbers of Employees Who Work at Home Are Growing GANNETT NEWS SERVICE WASHINGTON Employers are letting more workers spend part of their regular work hours at home the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday The number has nearly doubled since 1991 from 19 million to 36 million This allows workers more flexibility in structuring their hours to meet the challenges of balancing work and family Labor Secretary Alexis Herman said An office worker for example might spend Thursday morning at home with papers spread out on a kitchen table to work undisturbed on a special project instead doing it at home late at night without compensation Still more than half of the 215 million Americans who brought their work home with them last year did so on their own time and without financial compensation workers have Many About 60 percent gone high-tec- h used a computer and 35 percent also used a communications modem in 1997 The 1991 survey did not ask those questions Contrary to the image of home-base- d work as a haven for moms trying to balance family and a career the survey showed men outnumbering women 112 million at-ho- director of labor force statistics We were measuring what was happening The number of people working at home increased by 75 percent from 1991 to 1997 from 20 million to 215 million Of those 215 million 15 million worked for someone else And more than 11 million were not paid by their employers for their work Many of the workers not getting extra compensation for work are professionals not eligible for overtime As for the remainder of the workers 41 million had home-basebusinesses and 24 d d people who used their homes part of the time the report said Among the occupations most likely to bring some of their work home were teachers (60 percent) writers artists and entertainers (42 percent) physicians and dentists (33 percent) and sales representatives for financial institu- business tions services FoolDist by Universal Press Syndicate Video Giants to 103 million And women without children under the age of 18 outnumbering those with children 59 million to 44 million We werent measuring peoples desire to be able to work at home explained Tom Nardone million were 1998 The Motley commodities or wholesalers (45 percent) Hitting Profits Of Small Guys Continued from E-- even if they rent no others It gets them in our stores to see what we have to offer Dickman said Peterman said Movie Buffs has reorganized somewhat opting to sell two stores in Roy and River-dal- e rather than doing the retro fitting it believed would have been necessary to make the stores competitive It decided instead to open a new store in a prime location in Clearfield Jolley who owns Jolleys Pharmacy stores chose to combine Top Hat with a pharmacygift shop on 1300 South in an effort to make both ventures more profitable Combining the two operations so far has worked well he said This business is just like every other Jolley said You have to adjust and adapt with the times l has converted most of its stores Other independents also have been wooed by the national chains Video Verns Dickman said his company has turned down offers So too has Movie Buffs which operates 14 stores in Utah said Larry Peterman general manag- WordPerfect Suite 7 Professional WordPerfect Suite 8 Lotus Smart Suite 97 Calendar Creator 50 Body Works er Independents have their own plans for grabbing larger shares of the video-rentmarket Dickman Peterman and Bryce Jolley owner of a Salt Lake City Top Hat Video store say they nurture the images they have built as convenient neighborhood stores where customers develop a rapport with employees They are confident there are plenty of consumers who are weary of large chains generic offerings and will seek out the variety and uniqueness they provide All offer special promotions to build customer loyalty Video Verns for example offers a deal that allows customers to rent five new releases for five days for $999 The company also offers parents the chance to rent two childrens videos for free 60 Chess Master 5000 Quake II After Dark Screen Saver 40 Encarta 98 - Job by Discovery Channel Kid Pix Studio Big Doom II Save up to $12000 Olatt Act will to 20 00 waive up $ of your Insurance Deductible Free Mobile Service & Free State Safety inspection Call for Details GlaSS Ad 533-884- FfovoOrera 373-872- SLCC 6 ms refill kltatwd refflacetiidft cartridges Starting at NOW OPEN SUNDAY Digitrak 5628 S 900 E 4 Area 392-107- Hercules Print Studio SLC CT 266-474- 8 NOON-- 5 2 Digitrak Layton W 320 Uftoo 1550 II HiTa Burinra Put Fine Arts Where Class Means Performance! 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