Corrections or additions?
These stories by Peter J. Mladineo and Barbara Fox were published
in U.S. 1 Newspaper on May 6, 1998. All rights reserved
Survival Guide
When she’s not out roaring around on her Honda,
Brenda Buttner
is out there getting perspective in the world of mutual
funds. “So often our portfolios tend to be a collection of top
performers of the past year really with no rhyme or reason to
them,”
says Buttner. “You have to know what purpose they serve in your
portfolio.”
Buttner, a former television host, an Oxford Rhodes Scholar, and a
former editor of a motorcycle magazine, now writes for The Street,
the fee-based online financial newsletter found at
She is one of the speakers at the “Countdown to 2000: Financial
Strategies for Your Future II” conference sponsored by Money 2000
and the Rutgers Cooperative Extension on Saturday, May 9, 9 a.m. at
Frelinghuysen Arboretum, 53 East Hanover Street in Morris Township.
Call 973-579-0985 for more information.
Whenever Buttner gives a speech, someone in the audience asks her
to reveal the best mutual fund. If you listen closely enough, you
might hear Buttner sigh before she gives her reply. “You really
need to rephrase the question,” she says. “What’s more
relevant
is, what are the best funds for me at this point in my life?”
One trick Buttner uses to gauge a fund’s worthiness is if the fund
manager invests his own money in it. “That’s something you’re
not going to find in a prospectus,” says Buttner. “That’s
something you have to call and ask for. I find it very useful to call
the 800 number and ask the fund representative. You can often get
pretty honest answers that way. Usually if you’re not being told about
it that should tell you something.”
Performance-wise, most investors tend to have short frames of
reference
when researching mutual funds, Buttner reports. “I recommend
looking
at long-term performance when you can,” she says. “Look beyond
the beyond the fund du jour to find the real performers. Look
for three-year records. Look for down periods within those three-year
records to get some idea of how volatile the fund may be. Look at
these numbers in context. A double-digit return last year doesn’t
mean anything unless you compare it to a benchmark.”
When considering costs, she reports, it may be necessary to get
stronger
glasses to read the prospectus. “You can really go cross-eyed
trying to pay attention to what you’re paying, but costs really are
key to future returns,” says Buttner. “So I urge investors
to pay attention to the expense ratio of a fund.”
Determining risk is important too, if not slightly apocryphal.
“There
is no shortage of tools out there,” says Buttner. “Some of
them are sophisticated, others are crude, none of them are perfect,
but depending on your time horizon and your stomach’s ability to take
highs and lows I think it’s worthwhile to see how a fund does
volatility-wise.
The point is not to avoid risks but really to understand the risks
you are taking.”
Buttner, 36, has made several career moves that would classify as
high-risk. She has a degree in social studies from Harvard University
(Class of 1983). After her two years of Rhodes Scholar studies at
Oxford, she immediately entered the television world. “I went
to Reno, Nevada, and worked for $4 an hour at an NBC affiliate,”
she says. Then followed stints in Washington, D.C., for Gannett
Television
and CNBC, where she eventually stayed on as a host for the Money Club.
This show was canceled last October. Thereafter, Buttner got an offer
from the Street and decided to drop out of television.
In between television jobs Buttner became the editor of Cycle World
magazine, a title that earned her the distinction of becoming the
first female editor of a motorcycle magazine. “I don’t usually
put that on my resume,” she says. “It was a very physically
challenging and exerting job. I was hauling motorcycles around in
a big van. It was really fun to ride a different cycle each day.”
The proud owner of a Honda VRF (“a little faster and more nimble
than a Harley,” she reports), Buttner still rides a lot and uses
a lot of motorcycle metaphors in her column. Also, she and her
husband,
banker Larry Klane,
biked cross-country in 1993, and are more
likely to talk about gaskets and throttles than about finance.
Buttner detests sports metaphors, which she feels are emblematic of
the days when old boy networks dominated the field of investing.
“I
think the field can be very intimidating to women and we tend to be
more risk-averse, so we tend not to invest,” she says. “But
in the end I think there are a lot of things that are gender-specific
that make us better investors. We’re more willing to do research to
find the funds that are right for us, and not use the hot funds. And
our ego doesn’t get involved. And once you get past the jargon and
the stupid sports metaphors, women really can be better investors
and be good at it and insure the goals that we want through it.”
But wouldn’t motorcycling classify as a sport? Not really, Buttner
insists. “I’m talking about getting on a bike and physically
challenging
yourself. It’s not so us-versus-them.” Never mind those times
she taunted Jim Rogers
(the other financial guru/biking
aficionado
who used to appear on her CNBC show) about the fact that he rides
a wimpy BMW.
— Peter J. Mladineo
So you want to be a noted financial columnist? First,
read the above article and note all the neat things Brenda Buttner
has done with her life. Second, read this article and note all the
neat things Warren Boroson,
the 63-year-old financial columnist
for the Daily Record of Morristown, has done in his life. Then write
your own script and be sure to include arduous hours of sitting in
a front of word processor wondering why you are doing this.
Soul-searching aside, Boroson and Buttner are the keynotes at the
conference sponsored by Money 2000 and the Rutgers Cooperative
Extension
on Saturday, May 9. The other speakers are Barbara O’Neill,
a consumer sciences educator with the Rutgers Cooperative Extension,
and certified financial planners Patricia Brennan,
Diane
MacPhee,
and Diahann Lassus. Call 973-579-0985.
Boroson has written 20 books, had a radio show on mutual funds,
published
a mutual funds newsletter, taught at Rutgers University, Ramapo
College,
and the New School, and been on the staffs of both Money magazine
and Sylvia Porter’s Money Guide. His bestselling book, “Keys to
Investing in Mutual Funds” ($4.95, Barrons Educational Publishing)
“sold a hell of a lot of copies” and is currently in its third
edition.
Boroson grew up in Hudson County, got his degree from Columbia College
(Class of 1957). For the Daily Record, a job Boroson loves because
it gives him the opportunity to work with vigorous young people, he
churns out three columns a week and spends a lot of time interviewing
investment gurus.
Here are three ways these gurus say you can get rich playing the stock
market:
Buy “everything.” He’s talking about index funds– those funds that act as a representation of everything on themarket. “If you do that you’re going to do very well most of thetime, because you’re going to have a very diversified portfolio,”he says. “You’re not paying the manager very much, and you’rediversified by industry. Another benefit is there won’t be any drasticchange in the way the fund is managed. Another benefit is that whenyou buy an index, you would be buying stocks that no one else wantsto buy because they’re dogs. And some of the dogs, like OxfordHealthcare,have done tremendously.” This advice comes from John C.Bogle ,who started Vanguard Funds.Buy underpriced stocks. Decades ago, it was called”buyingstraw hats in winter.” The goal: Look for signs that a companywith a low-priced stock can turn around. A well-known investor whodoes this is Michael F. Price, who runs Mutual Series Fundsin Short Hills. “Whenever a company is in trouble Michael Priceis waiting in the wings,” Boroson says. The Mutual Series Fundwas started by Max Heine, who made his name by buying railroadbonds. “He had the guts to look at bankrupt railroads. That, inessence, is what Michael Price does.”Buy healthy stocks. While they’re not cheap, they’re goodlong-term buys if you know when to get out. “You have to be thefirst person off of the merry go round,” says Boroson. Expertsin high-performance stocks like Ron Baron,who runs the BaronFunds, and Warren Buffet, usually sniff out stocks for itemsthat will fare well in the big picture. Currently Baron is buyingstock in agricultural firms and in Spanish-speaking radio stations.Buffet raised a lot of eyebrows when he admitted he bought Gillettestock because it would allow him to make money in his sleep –as America’s beards grew. “He makes more money snoring thanworking,”says Boroson. If only the same thing was true about writing columns.– Peter J. MladineoTop Of PageCoping with the IT ShortageGeeks never had it so good. In times like these, onething scarcer than an underpaid information technology professionalis a company with all of its IT positions full. The fact is, ITbudgetsare hitting all-time highs and, if you’re a programmer who knows thehot languages like Oracle, Java, Visual Basic, Windows NT, or C++,chances are — if you’re good, that is — you’ll be able toshop your talent around and join the ranks of the ridiculouslyoverpaid.Their salaries as not quite as glaringly overinflated as those ofsports stars, but David L. Sears reports, the same”git-while-the-gittin’s-good”attitude permeates the industry.”There are people who literally bounce around going from offerto offer,” says Sears. “From their perspective it’s a rationaleconomic thing to do. You’re hot now but your skills are going toget old pretty quick so you better make the money while you can.”But Sears, whose Morris Plains-based consulting firm, D.L. Sears &Associates, works with IT companies on issues of recruiting,compensation,and leadership. Sears and Stephen Berlin, an attorney withGiordano,Halleran & Ciesla, will speak at the New Jersey Technology Councilon Friday, May 8. The moderator is Ron Woodmansee of FullerWoodmansee & Co. Call 609-452-1010. “The key issues are theshortageof IT-skilled professionals and how are people developing strategiesto both attract these people and retain them,” says Sears.This winter, reports proliferated in the media that 10 percent ofthe IT jobs in the country weren’t filled. This information was rootedin a survey done by the Information Technology Association of America,which hypothesized that at any given time in the United States therewere 350,000 vacant jobs — roughly 10 percent of the country’sestimated IT workforce. “That’s been the scare number that’s beenthrown around and what Congress has been asked to react to when theytalk about raising the quotas for entry visas,” says Sears.”Thequota (65,000) gets filled long before the end of the year.”Obviously, the ITAA, an association for technology employers, hasits own interests in mind by promulgating the 10 percent statistic.Its members would benefit greatly if Congress made it easier for themto hire more technology workers from overseas — thereby easingthe perceived labor shortage.But while some companies pay premiums for what Sears calls”technologyathletes,” there are also other companies with “computersthat take up entire rooms” and legacy-trained people to go withthem. Many of these older workers could be retrained to do higherend work.The shortage can also be a potential hindrance for small businesses.”The small technology employers are trying to compete in thismarketplace and trying to do the best they can and pay competitivelyso their talent doesn’t walk out the door,” says Sears. “Aretechnology companies figuring out ways to tweak their practices sothat they come off as attractive and retention-worthy employers?”The rapidly rising salaries of IT people poses the biggest dilemmafor small companies, many of which can’t compete with large firmsfor the talent. But, almost as a form of poetic justice, many largecompanies are now growing so frustrated with staffing shortages thatthey are outsourcing an increasing amount of work, thereby creatingnew niches for smaller, more specialized IT firms.Here are some tactics that larger companies are employing to keeptheir IT people:Give them huge sign-on bonuses. Yes, $20,000 to sign-onis nothing to sneeze at (some actually do), but that isn’t the endof it. Some companies have found it necessary to give their prizedgeeks “stay bonuses.”Make it easier to give employees bigger raises. For everyjob within a large company, there are salary ranges and grades withinthose ranges. Using a technique called “broadbanding,”employersgive hiring managers and supervisors more leeway to flatten out thosegrade structures and line their IT heroes’ pockets faster.Budget more money for “merit increases.” Searsnotices a trend where companies are now allocating nine to ten percentof their annual budgets for this type of raise, which typically hasnothing to do with merit. “People call them merit increases butthey end being an everybody-gets-his-increase-type of thing,”says Sears.Give employees more stock options. There’s nothing moreexciting than giving your franchise programmer a bigger stake in thecompany’s stock — especially if it’s stock from IT company (insome cases, putting the employee on a bus to Atlantic City would bemore advantageous).For small companies, there is another way around this Dilemmaof the Golden Shackles: good management. “In my experiencecompaniesthat do the best with this problem don’t just throw money at it –they try to get people’s involvement in projects,” says Sears.In other words, you can give your employees quantum pay increases,but if your management staff resembles that portrayed in Dilbert,you’re throwing money away. Instead, try keeping them interested inthe work they are doing. Feed them. Treat them like humans as opposedto Web servers.”Lousy management and bureaucracy — that’s the kind of stuffyou want to avoid,” says Sears. “Management hasn’t gottena lot of attention. There are obviously good managers in the ITenvironmentbut there are a lot of good people who have never had any trainingor good exposure to managers who do it well.”Sears, 50, has an undergraduate degree from the University ofPennsylvania(Class of 1969) and a graduate degree in industrial relations fromCornell (Class of ’81). Prior to starting his company three yearsago, he spent eight years in charge of professional and managerialstaffing for Dow Jones & Co. on Route 1 and worked in employeerelationsand human resources for the New York Times.Both of these jobs dealt with information systems, and, says Sears,both of those companies also have problems keeping their IT staffsintact. “They both operate in and around the New York market andthey end up competing with Wall Street for technology people,”he says. “Wall Street pays handsomely when Wall Street’s doingwell.” Well, better git while the gittin’s good.– Peter J. MladineoTop Of PageSoftware for CROsHere’s an opportunity for the umpteen million clinicalresearch professionals in the Princeton area to get out and rubelbows:The Association of Clinical Research Professionals meets on Thursday,May 14, 6 p.m. at Convatec at Headquarters Park Drive off Route 518.Call 609-252-4410 for information.The speaker is Ellen Loonan, a clinical projects senior managerat DZS Computer Solutions, a 14-year-old Bound Brook-based consultingfirm that specializes in helping drug companies, contract researchorganizations, and medical device manufacturers with the datamanagementand statistical analysis portions of their drug studies. “We takedrugs, collect the data, put it in the databases, and do qualitycontrol,”says Loonan. “We go from that to developing a whole statisticalplan, creating programs and generating reports, tables, and listings,which will enable the drug company to get the new drug approval.”People in the world of data management speak in terms of adverseexperiences,concomitant medications, data queries, data tracking, and data flow.DZS’s work is heavily software-intensive, and, Loonan reports, lastyear the company created a sister company, DZS Software Solutions,to market the software it has been honing over the years to do thework. It’s called ClinPlus, an SAS-based, platform-independent packagethat comes with eight modules to help with various steps of theclinicalreview process. These include data management, new drug applications,queries, drug coding, and tracking.SAS, an acronym for statistical analysis systems, is a programminglanguage and dataset structure designed by the SAS Institute of Cary,North Carolina. Specifically designed for statisticians, SAS isprimarilyused by contract research organizations, insurance companies,pharmaceuticalfirms, and marketing firms.ClinPlus competes with products by Oracle and a few other firms,althoughOracle’s tools are not SAS-based. Because ClinPlus is SAS-based, saysLoonan, the data is always accessible to users. “We don’t haveto transfer the data from one database structure to another,”she says. “Our software allows to do queries on it. Our softwareallows us to do the coding on it.”David Horowitz, the vice president of sales and marketing,explainsthat Oracle-based systems require an on-site database administratorand the creation of a second SAS dataset. “What’s the point ofhaving two databases?” he says. “Oracle claims that you needa relational database, but you don’t need a relational database todo data management. In data management a relational database isirrelevant.”Nevertheless, Oracle is still Oracle and is always a formidablecompetitorwhen it comes to databases. “They’ve been out there a lot longerthan us,” says Horowitz.Transitioning a company to software development is never easy foranyone. It’s one thing to have a good idea, it’s another thing tobe able to sell it. But in the case of ClinPlus, its high price andability to expedite a drug study makes the prospect a whole loteasier,maintains Doron Z. Steger, the founder and namesake of the firm.”It’s not a mass quantity-type of product,” he says. “Yousell five or six a year and you’re doing great. It’s a very a limitedmarket, very specialized, and very important — it means a monthsooner to getting their drug approved.”So far, ClinPlus has a dozen customers and costs between $30,000 to$200,000 for the full eight-module package. “We did have someadvantages going to a product that someone going fresh wouldn’thave,”says Steger. “One of them is a ready-made client base. The secondthing is since what we do is develop software in-house, the productsthat we sold were to a large extent already developed. A large costof the development has been paid through working for our clients.We didn’t have to go out at square one and pay 100 percent of thecost doing development. We were able to start off at 70 percent andfill in the gap. We had the product, we had the connections, thenit was just a matter of putting the thing together.”Top Of PageFree Legal AdviceA free legal clinic will be held on Wednesday, May 13,5:30 to 7 p.m., at the Clay Street Learning Center, on the cornerof Clay and Witherspoon Streets in Princeton. Anyone can have a free15-minute consultation with an attorney to talk about any of thefollowingproblems: family law, real estate, municipal court, motor vehicleviolations, landlord/tenant problems, small claims court, personalinjury, wills and estates, workplace problems, how to choose anattorney,and bankruptcy.Clients are seen on a first come, first served basis. The clinic –the only free legal clinic of its kind in the county — issponsoredby the public education committee of the Mercer County BarAssociation,Lawyers C.A.R.E., and is held regularly at different locations. Thepurpose of the free event is to educate the public about their legalrights and then point them in the right direction for resources. Call609-585-6200.Top Of PageWomen’s NetworksNetworking opportunities are plentiful at YWCA TWINdinners, and this year’s is no exception. Want to get to know peopleat Educational Testing Service? At state government? At some of thepharmaceutical companies? Buy an $85 ticket the annual fundraiseron Thursday, May 14, at 6 p.m. at the Hyatt. Call Diana Leathamat 609-987-0222.Eight women are being honored: Nancy H. Beckerof the eponymouspublic affairs firm in Trenton; Janet Bowker,vice presidentof strategic operations of ETS; Mollie Brodsky,executivedirectorof Crawford House; Brenda Hopper,state director of New JerseySmall Business Development Center Network; Janet Lasley,presidentof Lasley Construction Inc.; Karen Linder,research fellow/teamleader, Bracco Research USA Inc.; Donna Pressma,president andCEO, Children’s Home Society/NJ; and Michele Ryan, executivedirector/nursing, Medical Center at Princeton.Top Of PageFemale Friendly?Will your company be on the honor roll? The ExecutiveWomen of New Jersey have prepared a status report on how women areadvancing their careers on business, law and government, education,sports, and science and technology. Where are the women CEOs? theyasked. How successful have New Jersey companies been in promotingwomen to senior positions and providing programs to increase careeropportunities for their female executives?The honor roll will be unveiled at the “Salute to the PolicyMakers”dinner on Thursday, May 14, at 5:30 p.m. at the East Brunswick Hilton.Sally Ride, former NASA astronaut and physics professor at theUniversity of California at San Diego, will give the keynote. For$500 tickets call 732-530-4098.At the dinner 37 women will be honored, and a panel will discuss theglass ceiling question, posed as “Is it only a matter of timeor must women overcome significant cultural and social challengesto become CEOs of major corporations?”Panel members include Nancy Blethen, president of ExecutiveWomen of New Jersey, Marguerite Schaffer Esq., chair of thedinner, and Sandra Paul, treasurer of the organization. TheEWNJ is a monthly forum for senior executive members for sharinginformationand business experiences. The money raised from this biennial dinnerwill go toward graduate scholarships.Next StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
