SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Not always the best policy

You can be too honest.

Teri Felix, vice president of electronic brokerage and marketing for Charles Schwab & Co. Inc., learned that lesson at the Investment Management Consultants Association’s California consultants confab last month at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. After Ms. Felix had led her audience through a flawless tour of Schwab’s retail web site, she admitted that she wasn’t really hooked up to it. Hoots arose from the audience as Ms. Felix explained that she didn’t trust the hotel’s Internet lines. But audience members were quick to remind her of the Schwab site’s slow response time on Oct. 27, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 554 points. Ms. Felix called that day’s volume “extreme” and blamed some of the site’s lethargy on anxious customers who pushed the log-on key more than once.

Dreyfus banks on banks

The lion may be roaring its way to a bank near you. Dreyfus Funds was voted the top provider of investment products to banks in a survey of satisfaction with investment product and service providers. For mutual funds, Delaware Group won.

But neither was tops in performance, according to the survey by Boston-based Dalbar Inc. Advisers selling through banks voted American Funds and Franklin Templeton Group their favorite fund companies while Hartford Funds and Franklin were tops in variable annuities. Aegon was voted No. 1 for fixed annuity products.

Fund flows test limits

New cash flows into bond mutual funds more than doubled in January from December while equity fund flows were the lowest since January 1995, according to estimates from the Investment Company Institute in Washington. An estimated $18.5 billion went to stock funds in January, up from $16.8 billion in December. Bond and income funds took in $11.5 billion, the highest monthly inflow since $12.7 billion in August 1993.

Not the Village Voice, but…

To attract advisers to its annual symposium in Rochester, N.Y., on March 13 and 14, the upstate New York ch
apter of the International Association for Financial Planning has sent out flyers that look like personal ads, even the risque kind.

One entry reads: “ADULTS ONLY!!! Live one-on-one, local financial services professionals waiting to talk live to you! All major credit cards accepted. Avg. $2.83 per person. No min.

Call 1-800-442-3769.”