I am an investment advisor who is about to set up a seminar program
for potential investors.  Although I work for a great firm, they
encourage us to market specific financial products.  These may or 
may or may not be what the public wants and needs...

So, before I waste my money on seminars offering the wrong products,
thought I would ask you for advice.

From my own casual reading, I know the public is currently asking for
more information on:

1.  Long-term care
2.  Hedge funds
3.  Guaranteed principal funds
4.  Gold
5.  Offshore investing
6.  Real estate 

Conversely, investors try to punch me when I mention: 

1.  Technology funds
2.  African/Middle Eastern funds
3.  Venture capital
4.  Sector funds----airlines and telecommunications
5.  Chinese funds
6.  Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)


A 5-star answer would expand each of these two lists,
from 6 items each to 12 items each.  

This may be an easy question for you researchers becuase I don't
need any background information, web links, expanded text,
or logical justification for your answer.   Just need
some new ideas to get me going...

You may even be able to answer "off the top of your head."
That would be fine with me.

All comments appreciated.  "Wild" and unusual ideas especially valued !

Thx.
ron

---

Request for Question Clarification by responder-ga on 11 May 2003 15:18 PDT

Hell nron - see my request for questions clarification, below.  

Cheers!

---

Clarification of Question by nronronronro-ga on 11 May 2003 16:07 PDT

Canada, eh?      (Sorry.  Just couldn't resist.)

Yes, my friend.  I would most definitely be interested
in the interests of Canadians!

Although I live in California, my hunch is those 
topics which interest your countrymen will 
also interest my West Coast prospects.

Please answer at your convenience. 

Thank you, eh !!      ron

Dear nronronronro,

Thanks for your question.  First, let me request that if any of the
following is unclear or if you require any further research – please
don’t hesitate to ask me for a clarification.

You asked for “what investors are interested in now…”

Let me tackle this in a couple of different ways – first, let’s take a
look at what the market has been doing over the past three months;
Marketgauge keeps a statistical pulse on the market, and here are the
top sectors based on the past three months’ performance –

Retail (Home Improvement)		34.80%
Retail (Technology)			30.30%
Schools			                26.70%
Computer Storage Devices		25.70%
Tires			                26.50%
Retail (Specialty)			24.30%
Semiconductors			        30.90%
Construction Services			22.60%
Footwear			        21.60%
Personal Services			20.70%

Obviously, retail is a hot topic – and, while technology as a whole
may very well get you tomatoes… (bring an umbrella?), certain sectors
within technology are probably worth talking about because they have
been beaten down so badly.  Memory will continue to be big as more
consumers try to figure out where to stash all those digital pics,
.mp3s and digital video clips.

Demand for memory will also continue to grow on the enterprise end –
companies continue to produce more data than they’ll ever know what to
do with, but regardless, they need to be able to store (and maybe even
access…) it.  Semiconductors are also an interesting play, with
companies such as Applied and Intel trading at 1997-98 levels.

Schools are interesting – there are two trends to consider here –
online plays such as UOP (for whom I proudly teach!), and privately
managed for-profit schools such as Edison.

You’ve hit on real estate – seems construction services are hot as
well.  Personal services are interesting – this group includes stuff
like tax preparation (H&R Block), legal services, weight management,
travel reservations etc.  Not a group one may intuitively think of as
“hot” at the moment.

A second way of tackling this issue is by searching for recent
articles – seems the following are “hot” –

+ Rebalancing - Portfolio rebalancing e.g. stocks vs. bonds vs. cash

See for example –

Spring cleaning - Barron's; Chicopee; Mar 24, 2003; Jacqueline Doherty

+ REITs (yes, real estate, but via the stock market/mutual funds)

+ Global diversification – think foreign issues, ADRs (not sure if
this is what you had meant by offshore, but definitely coming up as a
hot topic)

+ Stock index funds (who wants to bet on a single stock or even on a
portfolio manager nowadays?)

+ High-yield junk bonds

See –

Help! My Portfolio's Fallen... --- Investors Need New Approach To
Recover From Stock Meltdown; Think REITs, Foreign Issues
Wall Street Journal; New York, N.Y.; Apr 2, 2003;

+ dividend paying companies – especially utilities – Cramer (he of
street.com fame) has been hyping these in his new book, You Got
Screwed! Why Wall Street Tanked and How You Can Prosper (by James J.
Cramer); see also a good, comprehensive review that covers the book’s
essentials at –

A Portfolio of Advice For Grim Times This year's crop of investment
guides makes for fairly gloomy reading. Yet some authors have found a
little honey amid the bear market.
Business Week; New York; Feb 10, 2003; Robert Barker

+ Finally, something I’ve done a couple of times in the last twelve
months – refinancing…!

I’ve also tried checking the search-engine analysis sites such as –

://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

…but they did not prove useful.  Sometimes these sites allow you to
check the pulse of the public on certain issues.

The topics you should not talk about…
*************************************

-	Internet plays / dot.coms
-	Front- and back-loaded mutual funds (vs. no-loads, which you may
want to add to your “good topics” list?)
-	Day trading
-	Small-caps
-	401Ks…
-	Wall Street Analysts

I hope this response adequately addresses your request.  Please let me
know if you are in need of additional information concerning this
query.

Thanks,
ragingacademic-ga


Search Strategy:

“personal finance” and “investment policy”
finance and investment and idea
“investment ideas”

Thank you !   ron

Hello nron - what part of the world do you hail from?  I would assume
the US of A.  I am a Canadian, with  more than just a basic knowledge
of investments, however, I am from Canada, and don't really know if my
ideas would be of interest to you, unless of course you are interested
in what is "big" for Canadians right now.

Please clarify at your convenience.

I think I want to get into your line of work.
Ok, wild and unusual. How about:

1. Timber Funds (it's wild, not really unusual)
2. Single Stock Futures (unusual, not really wild)
3. Mandatory Convertible Preferred stocks (wild and unusual)
more info about #3 can be found here -

http://www.smartmoney.com/sturmscreen/index.cfm?story=20021015screen

factsman!  Your comment is terrific.
Great ideas, and I appreciate your
taking the time to offer them.
Thanks mucho.  ron

-> Long term care
-> Health Care (not our insurances, they are as insolvent as our
government programs)
-> Cancer treatment (the baby boomers are getting it and our scanner
technologies are detecting more and more of them.)
-> Private Prisons (yes, California has them, government prisons are
getting old and overcrowded. Although they're not making a lot noise,
many aspects of the prison system have been privatized (e.g. laundry,
guards, construction, operation, telephone systems, security, etc.).
Captive audience, better retention, more repeat costumers,
ever-increasing marketshare, and guaranteed government cash flow.
Nothing beats investing into the Prison system. The number of private
prisons can only increase because it takes three years to build a
private prison and it takes 7 years to build a government prison.)
-> Retirement Real Estate (baby boomers are moving to the water and to
warmer climates. US population is growing)
-> Index Funds 
-> Gold
-> Security
-> Entertainment

steph1000----fantastic comments.  Insightful.  Thank you very much !   ron