Morningstar Advisor - Spring 2008 - (Page 9) Inbox The magazine of investing insights for independent-minded advisors Winter 2008 Morningstar Advisor Winter 2008 Style Investing Homebuilders Wide Moat sort I, as a CFP practitioner and Registered Investment Advisor, am looking for. I look forward to each future issue and all the useful data and relevant information, particularly interviews with successful money managers, regardless of their investment style or approach. Jason Hochstadt, JEDI Management, Fort Lee, NJ execution of equity and index option strategies and the risks therein. MorningstarAdvisor.com The information that your Web site provides is important to my growth as an independent Options Are We Cramping Your Style? Investing doesn’t always fit neatly into a box—not even the Morningstar Style Box. E-mail your feedback, ideas, and viewpoints to magazine_editor@morningstar.com Style Investing I just wanted to drop a brief note expressing how much I like reading Morningstar Advisor. Being new to the financial planning profession, I am constantly looking for objective sources of high-quality information, without the spin. The emphasis on the style box in your Winter 2008 issue gave some historical perspective. I remember its introduction while I was an individual investor. It is unfortunate to see how some good funds were perhaps kept open too long, thus causing even excellent managers to deal with a torrent of new cash. This caused them to move beyond their desired market cap. Fidelity Low-Priced Stock is an example. Please keep up the great work. Henry Glodny, Castling Financial Planning, Hoffman Estates, IL Your magazine is widely regarded by many in the industry as a legitimate resource for the investing community. So I was shocked to read an article by Philip Guziec titled, “Learning to Fly with Equity Options” (Winter 2008 issue). He covered a subject with gross liberty and negligent consideration for the academic rationale behind derivatives and derivative pricing. His overly simplistic, single-dimensional evaluation of collars and their situational application could easily lead to financial ruin for the unwitting market participant who trades on his interpretation. Derivatives are an extremely complicated instrument by themselves let alone combining them with other “legs” and adding dimensions of consideration. Leo Martinez, Epsilon Financial Group, Fairfield, CA advisor. After working with a large national firm for almost five years, I became an independent and found myself “cut off” from the resources that were at my fingertips. I have used the articles that your site provides and really appreciate the e-newsletters. It is rare that I don’t find at least one article that touches on something that I am considering to grow my business, especially in the areas of technology and client communication. Bob H., Texas Corrections Philip Guziec responds: My article was I am a subscriber to Morningstar Advisor (along with other Morningstar products) and thoroughly enjoy your publication. Since receiving the first issue, I have found myself reading each issue, for the most part, from cover to cover. The information is exactly the intended solely to help readers develop an intuitive understanding on how equity and index options potentially could be applicable to investor portfolios as tools for balancing risks and cash flows. I did not expect that this article or any future articles on equity and index options could be used alone or in combination as a sole basis for investment or hedging decisions. The concerns Mr. Martinez voices are entirely valid, and well taken. Let’s make it crystal clear that there are both theoretical concerns and execution risks to the use of equity and index options that any prudent investor or advisor should understand in detail before following a strategy. An advisor or investor considering the use of options as part of an investment portfolio needs to pursue extensive education on the proper In the Winter 2008 issue, we transposed the lines in the historical efficient frontier chart on page 28 in the article titled “Another Building Block for Your Portfolio.” On page 38, the fund whose Ownership Zone was compared with Weitz Value in the “Good Style Drift, Bad Style Drift” sidebar was mislabeled; it should have been Fidelity Low-Priced Stock. In the profile of Mary Ellen Stanek on page 63, the minimum investment for Baird Aggregate Bond Inst was misstated in the data box. The minimum investment is $25,000. In the Fall 2007 issue, we transposed the lines in the chart on page 68 for the W.H. Reeves Utility/Energy Equity separate account. MorningstarAdvisor.com 9 http://MorningstarAdvisor.com http://MorningstarAdvisor.com
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