Boring Portfolio Report
Thursday, August 29, 1996

by Greg Markus (MF Boring)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (August 29) -- I was up bright and early this morning to fly into Rochester, NY and spend the day finishing up some work before the fall crush begins. Nice, uneventful flight. Gorgeous day in Rochester. Excellent falafel sandwich and carrot juice for al fresco lunch at Aladdin's, on Monroe in a funky, just-seedy-enough-to-be-interesting part of town.

Got back to the Rochester airport after lunch and stopped for a minute to hit the phone and check on the market and the Boring stocks. A couple up, a couple down ... market's off a bit, no biggie.

So I hop on the plane back to Mo-town, land, retrieve my car from my secret spot at DTW, flip on the radio, and head for home. Ahh-h-h.

"...that's it in sports. Now for the Wall Street wrap-up. The Dow Jones industrial average ended down 65 points today, as blue chip stocks suffered their biggest loss since mid-July. Declining issues beat advancers by better than 2-to-1 in moderately light trading.

"The yield on the 30-year Treasury bond climbed above the 7% mark on the heels of a Commerce Department report that the nation's GDP expanded at a 4.8% annual rate in the three months from April through June. The Nasdaq Composite index lost nearly 9 points, and the S&P 500 index fell 7 points."

Hello? Boy, things certainly seemed just fine in Rochester! Wow, I wonder what else happened?

"As President Clinton polished his acceptance speech to be delivered at tonight's Democratic convention in Chicago, White House political strategist Dick Morris resigned after a supermarket tabloid reported he has had year-long affair with a prostitute, who he allegedly let listen in on confidential calls to the President."

Oh.

As far as tonight's Borefolio recap is concerned, there's not a whole lot to say, stock-wise. There's no news out on any Boring stocks, and the bulk of activity in those issues today was fairly unremarkable. Following a quick rundown of the stocks, though, I'll offer a thought or two on the political front -- because I see a sorta tie-in to what goes on here in Fooldom -- and no, I'm *not* implying anything about a bevy of hookers in Fool HQ listening in on quarterly teleconference calls.

Stock stuff. As I was saying, there was no news on any Boring holdings today. We must take notice of the fact the sole gainer in the Borefolio on Thursday was -- ta-da! -- Prime Medical Services, which head back *up* the hill by a half-step -- and fueled by a healthy 230K shares traded.

Carlisle continued its decline yesterday, falling a full $1 1/8. It's time to put a call in to Carlisle to see what the folks have to offer by way of explanation.

The two Boring "Groups", Borders and Shaw, were both unchanged, while the remaining Borefolio investments all fell fractionally.

Now to close with a political comment. I study politics, public opinion, voting, and such for a living. I'm sure it will surprise no one that the trust and confidence Americans have in their political, uh, "leaders" is at or near historic lows. What does surprise me, though, is how many folks continue to pin their hopes on throwing the old bums out and replacing them with a new set of bums, or term limits, or a balanced budget amendment, or tax cut, or some other magic bullet.

Look, perhaps all of those things might help. Perhaps not. Meantime, though, permit me to suggest that rather than sitting around waiting for this new candidate or that new law to rescue us from our predicament, it's time that we, ourselves, become more assertive and effective in the political arena -- whether it's in our community, our neighborhood, or even just among our friends and family.

As I see it, here in The Motley Fool we learn how to be more informed and effective investors. We learn not to rely upon mutual fund managers or financial gooroos to hold us by the hand and rescue us from a world of seeming financial confusion.

Individually, we learn to do our own homework, to analyze facts, to call companies and request -- even insist upon -- fair access to information. We educate ourselves. We exert some agency over our own futures.

Collectively, we share information, we offer a bit of comfort in the tough times, and we celebrate together in the good times. And little by little, we fundamentally change the power relationships between the community of "citizen investors," on the one hand, and the financial powers-that-be, on the other.

Perhaps, just perhaps, it's time to take some of those lessons we've come to practice in the investing side of our lives and apply them in the political side?

Look, there's nothing wrong with expert knowledge. And I'm just as happy as the next person to learn from and make use of folks who know more than I do. But just as our families' financial futures are too important to entrust entirely to financial gooroos, our political futures are too important to be left entirely to professional politicians.