Wednesday, July 22, 1998

Stiffing the Cold Callers
by Timothy O. Stuy
([email protected])

About two or three times a year the phone rings at dinner (or at work when the boss is hovering around my cube) and the cold-calling broker has found me again. The names always sound familiar. ("Fidelity" or "First" or "Value" are always in the name somewhere.) I love the hot stocks they have to push. Last week it was MGM Grand and, of course, she had inside information that a takeover/merger/split/etc. was going to happen in the next two weeks so I had to act right away.

The temptation is to hang up or tell them to go away but in my opinion this does nothing to slow them down before calling the next "lucky" investor. My personal investing field is very small banks and leased line railroads. By the nature of these kind of stocks they are usually listed on the Pink Sheets, trade in odd lots, and the amount of activity is so small that they are said to "trade by appointment."

So I tell Ms. MGM stockbroker that I would love to buy if she can scare up two or three of these Pink Sheet issues. The result is always the same: they can't find these things and they waste a lot of time doing it! Usually I am left to wonder how long the cold callers spend on these things. This time Ms. MGM stockbroker called me back to scream how she wasted two hours hunting down these once-a-year traders! All I could say was, mission accomplished!

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