Boring Portfolio Report
Tuesday, March 12, 1996

(FOOL GLOBAL WIRE)
by Greg Markus (MF Boring)

WASHINGTON, DC. Mar 12 -- Tonight's Borefolio update will have to be short, if not sweet, as I have to head out to the airport in a few minutes.

Unlike the fortunes of my brethren here in the Motley Fool Hall of Portfolios, the Borefolio fared poorly today, trailing all major market indices. When my daughter was young, she had a book called "Alexander and the No Good, Very Bad, Horrible Day." Well, that may be overstating the situation for Boring Stocks today, but not by much. Only Prime Medical's nice showing kept us from utterly striking out.

None of the losses were particularly considerable--save for our long-troubled Kulicke & Soffa; but they certainly were consistent. Borders fell off the shelf, Green Tree wilted, Lam got sheared, POT went to pot--well you get the idea.

And what about PMSI? Beats me. Prime Medical shares rose $3/8 today on volume of more than a half-million shares. That is at least a week's worth of normal volume for PMSI. There's no relevant news that I could spot. So I can only assume that this stock has finally caught the eye of some institutional buyers.

The semiconductor industry book-to-bill was reported about an hour ago (as I write this): .90. There's not much of a positive spin to put on that number. And despite its many deficiencies as a reliable indicator of the entire industry's health, that statistic is likely to affect chip-related stocks negatively tomorrow.

I still have over $12,000 in cash to work with in the port. I continue to look for stocks that offer the same kind of returns we've gotten from our two newest entries--Borders and PMSI. Let's see what the rest of the week brings.

Today's Moves

BGP   -   7/8
GNT   -   1/8
KLIC  -1     
LRCX  -   1/4
POT   -   3/4
PMSI  +   3/8
TXI   -1