Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 21

DETROIT FREE PRESSTHURSDAY, MAY 17, 1364 Mutual funds offer a hedge 71 1 1 If you like diversity in your investments and want a professional to keep track of their performance, a mutual fund may be for you, regardless of how little you have to invest. So what is a mutual fund and why might it work for you? A mutual fund is a big, sophisticated it )7 Free PressWILLIAM ARCHIE If someone else watches the tots swing, moms and dads can earn paychecks, so more employers are getting involved in child care assistance. These pre-schoolers, at McCauley Day Care Center in Ann Arbor, are Michelle Huddlestan, 3, Sarah Brooks, 4, and Corey Durr, 3. investment club. It pools money from a number of investors and then buys stocks, bonds and other investments.

The fund gives individual investors a great deal more purchasing power than they would have alone. The investor actually buys shares in the mutual fund, and the worth of the invest is president and chief operating officer of Milwaukee-based StrongCorneliuson Capital Management Inc. The company operates two funds that last year ranked in the top 10 of the 632 funds analyzed by Lipper Analytical Services Inc. Corneliuson, an Ishpeming native, was in Detroit last week to check out a company he thinks has growth potential. "The most important advantage of a mutual fund is to accommodate an investor vith a limited amount of capital," Corneliuson said.

"From a diversification standpoint, it's better. Rather than putting all your money into one or two stocks, you can buy a portfolio of securities." Even when the stock market is not fluctuating wildly as it has in the past three months, it's best for the market investor to hedge with a diversified portfolio. The best bet is a portfolio that crosses industry lines to assure protection during downturns. Mutual funds offer the small investor a small piece of a large number of stocks. "Today's markets are so much more volatile than they have been in the past," Corneliuson said.

"That's a really important ingredient for the psyche of an individual. If you owned' 100 shares of Teledyne last week, you were in great shape. But if you owned 100 shares of something else that went in the opposite direction, you're in less good shape." The stock for Teledyne a high-tech firm dealing in electronics and avionics, soared last week 32 points last Wednesday alone when the company announced it would buy back five million shares of common stock at $200 a share. THE BOTTOM LINE in mutual funds is the same as for any investment. Know what its investments are and make sure they're for you.

Check the fund's performance, particularly in the last three months. While a fund's past performance offers some indication of its financial advisers' knowledge, it's no guarantee of future gains. You can get information on mutual funds from any investment counselor. The American Association of Individual Investors, a non-profit corporation that helps individuals invest, publishes "The Individual Investor's Guide to No-Load Mutual Funds." To get a copy, send $15 to AAII, 612 N. Michigan Chicago, 111.

60611. If you have a question about personal finance or want to offer information to be included in this column, write Ben Johnson, "Your Money," Detroit Free Press, 321 W. Lafayette Detroit 48231. Questions of most general interest will be answered in the column. Don Johnson your mcnay 'v juptbtf-" ment depends on how well or how poorly the mutual fund's investments fare.

There are two kinds of mutual funds load and no load. No load means you don't have to pay a service fee to invest in the fund. For the person with a small amount to invest, this can be important. AS ONE might expect. William Corneliu- Jobs and day care go together son recommends mutual funds.

Corneliuson said Pat Ward, child-care co-ordinator. The local options include group centers, providers who take in up to half a dozen children in their homes, and providers who will travel to the child home. Last year, 184 families used the program, com pared with an estimated 224 families this year, says Ward. She calls the program "tremendously success' ful." I ii I I III I I I I I 1 I I 1 I AT COMERICA, child-care assistance comes in the form of tax-exempt subsidies in the paycheck, which became possible when the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 made child care a non-taxable benefit for rate? employes. This year, 280 of Comerica's 4,000 metro DAY CARE, from Page 1B care agency, the consortium made a list of qualified local sitters.

In the first quarter of 1984, 200 employes found day care with the help of the consortium, said Dennis Eade, vice-president of Squirt. To make sure the providers are reliable, the consortium holds on-site inspections and periodically offers free child-care seminars for the 55 providers on its list. A side benefit of the consortium system, said Eade, is that it has made the providers more enthusiastic and professional about their work. "Several of them are talking about going back to school to become certified, and they are linking together to form networks of support for one another," he said. "So there are benefits for the providers, the parents and the children." STEELCASE which has 7,000 workers in the Grand Rapids area alone, began an in-house child-care referral agency in 1980.

The company offers technical assistance, tax advice and eight to 10 workshops a year to the providers it recommends. The company lends cribs, strollers and other equipment to providers for as long as they have a Steelcase employe's child in their care. "We confer with employes who want this service about what they are looking for and then we give them three or four names of places they can visit," politan Detroit employes chose this child-care subsidy in their flexible benefit plans, said benefits officer Lee Wyatt. It works like this: A employe who spends $3,000 a year on child care may have his or her salary lowered to $27,000 thus dropping into a lower tax bracket and receive the $3,000 in bimonthly Increments as tax-exempt benefits. (Fried man predicts the tax-exempt subsidy eventually will become the most popular form of child-care assistance because of its flexibility and financial advantages.) In any event, employer supports to working par Cr cfwinnslU ents will increase dramatically in number and variety in the next three to five years, says Friedman.

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Some members of the committee want to repeal combat restrictions on women in the services, a point of view Donnelly does not support. "There are strongly divergent points of view in the group, but there is no hostility," she says. Disillusioned with Democrats Much of Donnelly's work is done at her home office, which is decorated with campaign buttons, a Susan B. Anthony doll, a reproduction of a pointing of Ronald Reagan, and a special award from the "Over the Rainbow" celebration held after the defeat of the ERA. It features a large eagle, and is signed "from Phyllis Schlafly and all of the Eagles." The buttons represent both ends of the political spectrum; Donnelly was once a Democrat.

"I was a Kennedy Democrat," she explains. "But I see no one in the Democratic field who comes close to expressing the ideals of Robert Kennedy. And I specifically single out Gary Hart, who I consider a real phony, in that Kennedy image of his. "Hart's problem is, he's a phony. Mondale's problem is, he's for real.

He really is for big spending and high taxation and the continuation of the Carter disaster. When they started nominating people like George McGovern, they lost me, and a lot of other people like me. I'm a former Democrat like Reagan is a former Democrat." DONNELLY'S HUSBAND, TERRY, an area technical manager of Honeywell Information Systems Inc. in Southfield, is not a member of the Republican Party, although he voted Republican in the last two presidential elections. "I guess we were both raised in Democrat families," he says.

"But I guess she formed her own opinion in that regard, maybe a little in advance of me. "We don't discuss politics. I kind of stay out of the active part of the political arena," Terry Donnelly says, adding, "I support everything that Elaine does. Elaine is an active, doer kind of person she doesn't let any grass grow on her, and I like that kind of person. When I come home at night, her talking about what she has accomplished during the day is very interesting for me.

"She is intense, she is well read. She will never do anything In the public forum without studying all sides of the issue." Elaine Donnelly thinks the biggest mistake 1984's presidential candidates could make is to assume such a thing as the women's vote exists. "Anyone who tries to peddle the key to the women's vote, I think, should be looked on with the same kind of skepticism as anybody who peddles the men's vote," she says. "We have issues of mutual concern, of course. But the major issues such as the economy and national defense, we have differences of opinion, just like men do.

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