SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Live cheap and invest

Outspent by the likes of American Express Co. and First Union Corp., SunAmerica Inc., which has long positioned itself as “the retirement specialist,” rolls out a $15 million-plus print and TV campaign this week intended to get Americans to give it the big bucks they’d otherwise blow on jewelry, cars and vacations.

A SunAmerica spokesman says “We felt we needed to do something unique” by targeting discretionary income in this era of affluence. The Moet & Chandon Luxury Price Index rose 3.9% last year, he adds, while the Consumer Price Index grew only 1.6%.

The Los Angeles-based subsidiary of American International Group is carrying out the theme with marketing kits for 17,000 proprietary reps and top-producing brokers. A calculator shows how much your nest egg would grow, assuming an 8% return, compounded annually over 20 years, if instead of buying that $70,000 baby Benz in your driveway, for example, you’d invested the same amount: $326,267.

Think of the money people waste on food instead of buying variable annuities!

Rest that wrist rest

Pounding a computer keyboard isn’t very bad for your health, the latest federal statistics on workplace injuries and illnesses show, despite the number of people you see in offices wearing wrist wraps. InvestmentNews sister publication Business Insurance reports that the Center for Office Technology found repetitive typing or data-entry jobs made up 0.6%, or 11,600 cases, of the total 1,833,380 injuries and illnesses requiring time away from work in 1997, the latest year for which Bureau of Labor Statistics data are available. That’s the same percentage as the previous year. The center is a joint labor-management operation.

The total number of injuries and illnesses attributed to repetitive motion across all job categories was 75,188, or 4.1% of total cases requiring time away from work. That percentage was slightly higher than the 3.9% for the previous year. Jobs with a high risk of repetitive motion injury include assembler, non-construction laborer, sewing machine operator, truck driver, cashier and packaging and filling machine operator. And don’t forget the guy holding the jackhammer.

The fact that the number of office-related injuries held steady, “despite ever-increasing computer usage at home and work, demonstrates that these incidences are not the growing menace often reported in the media,” says P.J. Edington, the center’s executive director.

It’s those evil reporters again, typing despite their sore wrists.

Half-brass job?

Neuberger Berman LLP really lives up to its value-conscious philosophy. InvestmentNews’ ampersand-tracking department has been keeping a close eye on the firm’s headquarters on Third Avenue in New York, just around the corner from our own, ever since last winter when it sent its “and” symbol to sleep the sleep of the just.

At last: New brass plaques without the ampersand now flank the company’s doorway. Well, not all new. The “Neuberger &” half was cut away and replaced by a shiny new “Neuberger” neatly butted against the weathered “Berman” half.

Over the long term, the halves will probably lose the Mutt-and-Jeff look, although past weathering cannot guarantee future compatibility.