Reno Gazette-Journal from Reno, Nevada • Page 53

Tech! Get this section Business Monday me SlTm4(XJRiNAL SECTION SUNDAY, JANUARY 21 2001 RENO Want to learn more? Read hut IIUU uu.clic uuui lial. rgj.comnewspastjssues RSCVA narrows CEO choice The Reno-Sparks Convention Visitors Authority Board of Directors voted Tuesday to advance Jeff Beckelman to the final round of testing for the job of RSCVA president and chief executive officer. The 54-year-old is the vice president of sales and marketing for the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas. IGT first-quarter earnings up Reno-based slot machine maker International Game Technology on Thursday reported higher earnings in its fiscal first quarter that ended Dec. 30.

IGT is riding a wave of strong replacements by casinos of older games, good recurring revenue from its Megajackpot games and strong orders from California Indian casinos, among other factors. New colors for Southwest fleet Southwest Airlines, Reno's No. 1 carrier, is changing the color of all of its planes, starting with this year's new aircraft. The new planes will have blue fuselages on top, with the familiar red underbelly. The tails will remain similar to today's appearance, but with the name outlined in blue.

To change all 350 existing planes will take a decade. Interior colors also are changing. Events center debate Tuesday A proposal to help fund a $65-million downtown Reno events-convention center through a higher room tax and assessments based on property values and the number of hotel-motel rooms, continues to face opposition from some business owners. Tne proposal will be reviewed and alternatives aired at 9 a.m. Tuesday on the second floor of the Virginian Hotel Casino.

Gasoline prices falling again Gasoline prices plummeted for a fourth straight month in Reno and across Nevada, but the slide could soon be over, the AAA Nevada's January survey reported Tuesday. Taxable sales are on the rise Taxable sales in Nevada rose 3.3 percent in November, the state Taxation Department reported Wednesday. One government economist said it indicates a modestly successful 2000 holiday season. Carson bank branch opening Business Bank of Nevada last week opened a new full-service financial center in the Shaheen Business Park, 1 8 11 East College Parkway, Carson City. Shooting stars lit up stocks, lost sparkle 1 By Tom Petruno LOS ANGELES TIMES stronomers deal in big num- Outlook turns gloomy More Americans soured on the stock market when asked by Gallup Poll, If you had $1 ,000 to spend, would investing in the stock market be a good or bad idea?" Answers from 1 990 until now: Good HBad 111 defy easy explanation or de-U 1 scription.

They might be Lit! I right at home describing the Utock market in 2000 and Fb.1990t""1?i TODAY Jan. 7-10 2000 Oct 13-14 2000 Wall Street 2E Dec. 2-4 2000 49 since the 1 960s, plummeted to under $5 by year's end from a 1999 high of $62 as the company's sales and financial health deteriorated. Lucent Technologies, and WorldCom led a virtual collapse of many established stocks within the telecom sector. For the market and the economy overall, it was almost as though the nation's amazing journey of the late-1990s the prosperity, the market gains, the feeling of American invincibility took a sudden turn into a worm hole.

In astronomy terms, a worm hole is a hypothetical passage in space to somewhere else. And that's what investors are wrestling with now: Where is that "somewhere else" we're headed for, as consumer and investor confidence slumps, spending slows and corporate earnings growth dwindles? Is the next destination a mild economic slowdown, a severe recession, or something in between? As usual at these junctures, the nation and the world look to the Federal Reserve. "It is all up to the Fed now," is a common refrain on Wall Street. To take the space analogy one step further, the Fed at these mo- I42 Jan. 10-14 200l Mutual fund investors might be thrilled the Fed has cut interest rates, but when they see their year-end statements, many will wonder what took so long.

decades (a negative total return of 9.1 percent). Though the average U.S. stock fund fell just 1 .9 percent for the year, according to Morningstar that figure was bolstered by strong returns in relatively few fund sectors that hold a minority of investors' dollars, such as health care and energy. By contrast, the fourth-quarter losses alone in many popular growth-oriented stock mutual funds were mind-numbing: Many fell more than 25 percent. Some lost more than 40 percent.

Year-end fund statements won't be pleasant reading for most growth investors. Wall Street's skies in late-1 999 and 2000 were filled with shooting stars that lighted up the market for a moment, then were gone. Most, of course, were "dot-com" shares. But there also were some spectacular crashes by former star stocks of much greater heft. Xerox, the copier giant that has been an American icon Calculating future of market Individual investors aren't the only ones trying to figure out the next best step in an unpredictable market.

Mutual fund managers also were affected by the volatility. USATOOV Source: Gaflup Pol perhaps in forecasting what this year could te like. Consider: If ever a major stock market index resembled a supernova, that was the technology-dominated Nasdaq composite inlate 1 999 and early 2000. As tech shares soared amid a global mania for anything and everything in that sector, the stocks' price-to-earnings ratios took a quantum leap to the outer limits. But by the fourth quarter, with the U.S.

economy slowing, the tech mania had turned into a full-fledged panic to get out at any price. Nasdaq the supernova became Nasdaq the black hole. The U.S. stock market's value surged by $3.3 trillion from October 1 999 to March 2000, then sank by $2.9 trillion between March and year's end, as even the blue-chip Standard Poor's 500 stock index suffered its worst calendar-year decline in two Investing 3-4E ments is more than a bit like the monolith in Arthur C. Clarke's "200 1 A Space Odyssey." Its power to create or destroy seems total, though exactly what it's thinking at any given moment can only be surmised.

This month, as the Fed cut its key short-term interest rate for the first time in more than two years, the stock market first staged a huge rally. See INVEST on 7E Sundowner: Time to ride into the sunset Tips on refinancing your home Before refinancing your home loan, check the Motley Fool to assess mortgage costs. Value funds stage a comeback Value funds, which were considered out-of-date last year, are staging a comeback. Find out how these funds have outperformed the Nasdaq index. In Perspective 5-6E Pet foods outpace human foods Pet owners spare no expense when feeding their finicky beasts, and the pet food industry in reaping the benefits.

The industry is growing twice as fast as people-food sales, and is a market. Savvy leaders work to stay 1 As concerns about a recession grow, successful managers must adjust quickly to sudden shifts in the economy. Find out what savvy managers are doing to stay on top. recently at the Gold-n-Silver on West Fourth Street. The 70-year-old businessman has been in the selling mood since he eot lune JOHN STEARNS facility they say a 1999 room-tax increase was supposed to cover.

Despite the challenging market, Karadanis said Reno has a place for properties like his. "There's a lot of customers who like a small niche operation with a friendly atmosphere," he said. Many people don't like the glitter of the big resort properties, he said, noting they get perks from the Sundowner that their play wouldn't warrant at a "big joint." "We've got a lot of good customers," he said. A little more than half of Sundowner's business is from bus charters, he said. The rest is mostly from other out-of-town visitors.

See STEARXS on 71 Karadanis said, adding he hasn't even had any good tire-kickers. Will the proposed downtown events center help improve the city's investment attractiveness? It would be a "real, real asset to the tri-properties (Eldorado, Silver Legacy and Circus Circus), but as far as helping all the other properties, I don't see where it would be an asset," Karadanis said. He echoed a familiar theme among some downtown property owners who are balking at helping to pay for a facility they doubt will have much, if any, direct benefit on their business. He and downtown property owner Pete Cladianos Jr. have circulated a form to downtown property owners under the header "Committee For No New Taxation Without Benefits," objecting to further taxation for a George Karadanis, co-owner of the Sundowner Hotel Casino in downtown Reno, makes no secret of his desire to sell the 580-room property he has owned with Bob Maloff since it opened in 1975.

"We'd desperately like to sell it," Karadanis said. "We haven't made any money in the last four years (1996-1999)." That same era was tough on much of downtown Reno, which struggled to absorb the capacity of the Silver Legacy Resort Casino that opened in 1995. Karadanis expects the losing streak to turn around for 2000 once all the numbers are recorded, but that doesn't change his mind about selling. "We would entertain a proposal to sell it if the right (buyer and offer) came along," he said over lunch Contact Us cancer in 1990. He has had it twice more and beaten it each time.

He doesn't smoke, but must breathe in his workplace. (Need any more evidence about the dangers of second-hand smoke?) Maloff, who's 80, also wants Karadanis to retire. "Things are rough in Reno right now; it's hard to find a buyer," Assistant business editor Siobhan McAndrew. (775) 788-6322 E-mail: businessrgj.com Fat (775) 788-6458 Circulation: (775) 786-8744 Classified: (775)322-2337.