SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Bull run

Maybe it’s just coincidental, but we don’t think so.

The Chicago Bulls are rounding into playoff form, having won a dozen games in a row, as of April 6. Meanwhile, the BULLS unit investment trust marketed by Chicago-based Rothschild Investment Corp. has beaten both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index in its first six weeks of existence.

BULLS, which stands for Blue-Chip Undervalued Land of Lincoln Stocks (the acronym really alludes to an Abby Joseph Cohen-type bull rather than a Michael Jordan-type Bull), is a UIT investing in the 10 highest-yielding stocks of Illinois-based companies, not including banks and utilities. In essence, it’s an Illinois version of the well-known Dogs of the Dow approach.

From its launch Feb. 24 through April 3, the BULLS trust returned 9.54%; the Dow’s performance during that time was 5.13%, and the S&P’s was 6.91%.

Bowling for dollars

For those who’ve been too busy in-line skating to notice, bowling is back — sort of. “Bowling has become almost cool,” writes Ronald Baron, president of Baron Funds, in a letter to shareholders. “Glow-in-the-dark bowling balls and pins and rock and disco music on weekend evenings have boosted yuppie and youth demand,” adds Mr. Baron. He bought his first bowling-related stock in 1958 using his bar mitzvah money. Four decades later, he’s back in the game.

His New York mutual fund boutique ($7.2 billion in assets) has a 15.9% stake in AMF Bowling, a leading owner and operator of bowling alleys and supplier of bowling equipment. AMF is Baron Asset Fund’s seventh-largest holding. Baron began buying AMF when it went public in October at 19.5 a share and boosted its holdings earlier this year when the stock was up a point. So far he’s headed for a 300 game: The stock was trading around 28 last week.

Survey: Knock down walls

By a margin of 60% to 31%, American voters favor allowing banks, insurance companies and securities firms to enter each other’s businesses. Never mind that legislation to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, which erected the financial barriers in the first place, has been touch and go during this session of Congress.

According to a just-completed survey by the Tarrance Group, commissioned by Merrill Lynch & Co. and reported in sister publication Pensions & Investments, the polls’ respondents believe current laws are out of date and change is vital to America’s ability to remain the world’s financial superpower. Specifically, 74% of the 812 registered voters surveyed by phone believe staying No. 1 in the world is extremely or very important; 72% think that allowing greater competition to create better pricing is extremely or very important; and 67% believe modernizing financial services laws is extremely or very important.

Apparently the nation’s No. 1 brokerage, which touted the results to the press earlier this month, would heartily agree.