Greenmoney Joins Internet

The GreenMoney Journal, the Spokane-based periodical covering socially responsible investing, went on-line Friday.

The publication’s electronic home page can be found at: http:/ /www.greenmoney.com.

The page was develped for GreenMoney by RCC Group of Washington, D.C.

“It looks good,” co-editor Cliff Feigenbaum said last week.

The page’s content will be limited initially, but more information will be available in the future, he said. Two years of back articles are already accessible, and the archives will be expanded to include the publication’s full five-year contents.

Articles will also be indexed by topic for easy reference, Feigenbaum said.

To comment on the new page, call 328-1741.

Technophobic fund flourish

If you’re nervous about the highflying technology sector, you may want to check out some beautiful anomalies - diversified-stock mutual funds that are up at least 20 percent this year but own relatively few high-tech stocks.

The best performer is Quest for Value Opportunity, whose top holdings are McDonnell Douglas, Mellon Bank and Federal Home Loan Mortgage. The fund is up 33 percent, although just 7 percent of its holdings are in high-tech stocks. Other techophobic stars: New York Venture, Pasadena Growth, Lazard Small Cap, Mutual Shares, and New England Value.

Scrutinize closed-end fund returns

Many people scan the stock listings in the newspaper for stocks and closed-end funds with high yields but never bother to inquire whether the company or closed-end fund is actually earning enough to pay its dividend.

Sometimes companies pay dividends that they can’t cover with earnings, thereby eroding shareholders’ equity. And some closed-end bond funds pay monthly dividends that are not covered by either interest income or dividends in their portfolio, and thereby erode the net asset value of the funds.

The yield on a closed-end bond in the newspaper is nothing more than the latest monthly dividend multiplied times 12 and divided by the share price of the fund.

In the past, some funds boosted income by selling call options on long-term government bonds they held. But they lost the bonds and their high interest income when interest rates dropped and the options were exercised.

More recently, funds suffered significant losses on Latin American fixed-income investments after last December’s devaluation of the Mexican peso.

, DataTimes