Short Interests: tips, trends, observations

Big news! Leaping into the 2000s, the old American Council of Life Insurance is changing its name to (watch carefully now): the American Council of Life Insurers. “The change is subtle,” council chairman James Ericson acknowledges in a statement. It sure is. The Washington-based trade association for life insurance underwriters maintains that the new name reflects the fact that they no longer provide just life insurance and, in fact, the business is now primarily in annuities for retirement. Oh. At least they don’t have to change their acronym.

Deposit? 5 minutes on high

You soon may be able to do your banking through your microwave. We’re not making that up. That’s what Mark O’Connell, vice president at NCR Financial Solutions Group claims in the latest issue of the America’s Community Bankers magazine. He says Dayton, Ohio-based NCR has already created a microwave bank, an appliance on which you can do your online banking, shopping and e-mail while you heat up your dinner.

Guess who isn’t in the van

Fidelity Investments gets bragging rights, at least for a while, over No. 2 Vanguard Group.

Though the Boston giant’s $100 billion Magellan Fund is soon likely to slip behind Vanguard’s low-cost 500 Index Fund in the asset-gathering derby, Fidelity is lengths ahead in the returns race, says Phillips Publishing Inc. The Potomac, Md., newsletter publisher, home of both the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors and the Fidelity Investor, reports that the average shareholder in a Fidelity fund earned 19.5% in 1999, while a Vanguard investor logged only an 11.4% return.

Daniel P. Wiener, editor of the Vanguard newsletter, blames too-cautious investors; James Lowell, who heads the Fidelity newsletter and helps Mr. Wiener manage money, credits Fidelity’s astute managers.

Stern schoolmaster

Speaking of Vanguard, retired senior chairman and founder John C. Bogle is going back to school — New York University’s Stern School of Business, to be exact.

“I have a very academic bent,” he told sister publication Pensions & Investments. Mr. Bogle won’t actually teach classes, but he’ll take part in some, including finance, leadership, ethics and marketing, a subject he tends not to believe in. He’ll also deliver a millennium lecture, which he says likely will focus on the future of the mutual fund industry.

Good will toward foe

They really know how to do things in Mexico, where Christmas starts Dec. 16 and doesn’t end until Jan. 6. Sometimes, though, the Christmas spirit can go too far, as officials at J.P. Morgan & Co.’s Mexico City office found.

A guest of honor at Morgan’s lavish pre-holiday fiesta was Martin Werner, No. 2 in the Mexican treasury. Surprise! After the invites went out, the 36-year-old muchacho miraculoso, or however you say wunderkind in Spanish, announced he was leaving the halls of Montezuma to run the Mexico City office of Morgan nemesis Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Can’t beat that for real Christmas spirit.