Phone Customers Faced With Choice

Beginning Monday, Washington consumers will be able to choose a local toll carrier just as they choose a long-distance provider today.

For the first time, customers of U S West Communications local phone service will be able to select another company to automatically carry their local toll calls. Previously, in order to choose another carrier, consumers had to dial a cumbersome access code before placing these calls.

Local toll calls, also referred to as local long-distance calls or intraLATA calls, are calls within a Local Access Transport Area (LATA) in the state of Washington, yet are outside of the local calling area.

For example, calls from Seattle to Olympia or from Spokane to Yakima are local toll calls. Charges for these calls are not included in a consumer’s monthly charge for local phone service. These types of calls generally are itemized on phone bills as local long-distance or local toll calls.

The prospect of competition is already affecting rates.

U S West has been promoting a rate of nine cents per minute for local toll calls, a penny off its existing rate.

Subscribers to the MCI One Savings residential long-distance plan will get a rate of eight cents per minute on those calls during evenings and weekends.

Out-of-favor funds often rebound

If the meek inherit, “Morningstar FundInvestor” has some recommendations for mutual fund buyers.

Morningstar looked at the amount of money going into and out of mutual funds since 1987. Its study showed that, 78 percent of the time, funds out of favor with investors in one year beat the average equity fund the next three years.

With those results in mind, Morningstar suggests investors might want to invest perhaps 10 percent of their money in each of three categories of funds - natural resources, Latin America and Pacific/Asian ex-Japan.

Among natural resource funds, Morningstar considers T. Rowe Price New Era, Vanguard Energy and Fidelity Select Energy to be solid choices.

For Latin American funds - those with 75 percent of their assets in Latin American stocks - T. Rowe Price Latin America, Select Latin America and Fidelity Latin America are examples.

Pacific/Asian ex-Japan funds have 75 percent of their funds in the region, but no more than 10 percent in Japan. Three options are Matthews Asian Growth & Inc., Matthews Pacific Tiger, and Newport Tiger.

Wall Street open for RV stocks

Good stories don’t always make good stocks, but there’s no denying that one of the better tales concerns the RV industry - makers of recreational vehicles and motor homes. The idea is that as baby boomers retire over the next 20 years, they’ll take to the roads.

It’s a business of small companies and stocks depressed by worries of an economic slowdown or higher oil prices. Still, they could be sleepers.

Red Chip Review (503-241-1265) gives its top rating to Coachmen Industries (COA), at a price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) of 13, and National R.V. Holdings Inc. (NVH), at 11. Other firms to consider: Monaco Coach Corp. (MNC), at 17; Winnebago Industries Inc. (WGO), 12; and Fleetwood Enterprises Inc. (FLE), 11.

Few stocks timely, safe

The Value Line Investment Survey (1-800-833-0046) ranks stocks from “1” (best) to “5” (worst) for “timeliness” (price performance for the next 12 months) and “safety” (balance-sheet soundness).

Just 100 out of the nearly 2,000 scrutinized stocks merit “1” for timeliness, and, of those, none last week was rated “1” for safety and only five get a “2.”

Both hot and sturdy, they are: AEGON, N.V. (symbol: AEG), insurance; Home Depot Inc. (HD), home-improvement chain; Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), software; Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT), retailer; and Walgreen Co. (WAG), drug chain.

Also, in Value Line’s top sector (Internet, naturally), two stocks get a “1” rating - America Online Inc. (AOL) and Yahoo Inc. (YHOO) - but both are ranked “4” for safety.