SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Adviser: Fidelity’s off base

Ric Edelman doesn’t mince words.

A financial planner and radio personality in Fairfax, Va., he’s in a dither over Fidelity Investments’ latest effort to attract investors by offering them the chance to win a trip to the 1999 World Series.

“Fidelity has commoditized the mutual fund business,” Mr. Edelman said recently on his weekly radio show on WMAL-AM.

“They have laid the gauntlet of saying that ‘our mutual funds are no better than anybody else’s. It doesn’t matter whose fund you buy, the add-on value that we can provide is going to come in a completely irrelevant way and the only way we’re able to get you to give us your money is to entice you, to bribe you, to coerce you in a completely unrelated way such as a contest.’ ”

Fidelity, which ended the contest last week, is downright diplomatic in its response to Mr. Edelman’s comments.

“We appreciate the feedback,” says spokeswoman Johanna Thornblad. “However, we have had very good feedback from our customers and we will always test new and different ways to reach customers and help us grow our business.”

How now, grown Dow?

The D10K computer problem, it turns out, was at Dow Jones & Co. itself.

D10K is the capability of systems to handle a seven-digit Dow Jones Industrial Average, counting the two decimal places.

Although everyone knew that the 10,000 level was coming, Dow Jones’ own website (indexes.dowjones.com) initially wasn’t able to report any number higher than 9,999.99.

Every time the Dow reached 10,000, the site displayed *,***.**, apparently indicating that the system was thrown for a loop by the big number. The site offered no explanation and the problem has since been fixed.

A report in the Wall Street Journal, which is owned by Dow Jones, trumpeted, “D10K bug turns out to be a big zero as computers easily handle 10,000.” The report didn’t mention Dow Jones’ own website.

“Funny is not the term I’d use,” Mike Jassmann, who oversees website development at Dow Jones in Monmouth Junction, N.J., told InvestmentNews sister publication Pensions & Investments. “It’s ironic.”

Bonnie Berrien, Dow Jones’ website designer, says she became aware of the problem only after it was brought to her attention via e-mail. She says when she told Dow Jones officials about it, “they were very surprised.”

Schwab referrals up 50%

Charles Schwab Corp. says it provided 4,000 investor referrals to financial planners in the first quarter, an increase of 50% over the 1998 period.

The referral program, called AdvisorSource, is a club of 420 advisers to whom Schwab refers clients with accounts of $100,000 or more to prescreened, authorized investment managers.

Americans, flush from what is approaching the longest bull market in history, are increasingly turning to financial planners for help with everything from asset allocation to estate planning.

According to Schwab, more than 6,000 investors have hired an adviser based on AdvisorSource since its 1995 inception.