[tabs]

Turbo....1.5% of total assets under management....thus 100K would be $1500 a year....for unlimited trades on an account...thus NO CHURNING of the account...it al;so means the Manager has incentive to grow the account....thus 200K would be 3K a year.

Portfolio Manager = Fee Only

One thing I absolutely hate are Mutual Bond Funds....there is no guarntee of principle nor of interest rate.... It is MUCH BETTER to buy the indivdual bonds themselves....When the Bonds are called your priciple is returned and your iinterest rate is fixed thus guarnteed....and if your Ladder the call dates you can keep abreast of the current interest rates....also thge key is to stay with Investment Grade Paper....

Another option is Prefered Stocks...which pay a quartely dividend...they act much the same as corporate bonds and pay a fixed percentage rate and have a call date..but if the co BK's you have second call after Bond holders....Again the key is Invewstment Grade Stocks.... Years ago I bought an Aetnea 10% prefered which was an A+ rated Prefered.... I shoulda backed the truck up on that one....

Really the only way to play the game is to buy a bond when it is trading for less than its par value....collect your income and when called collect the capital gain....the difference between what you paid and par value....I did that with a B of A prefered and made out nicely.....

As for Stocks I have a Portfolio Manager...that I was refered to by a man who had been involved in the Stock Market for 50 years...he said of her that she was the smartest and most honest Broker he had ever met....Her family has been in banking for 3 generations, she herself has been in financial services for over 30 years and is the only Portfolio manager that is Bank Trust Certified with Wacovia...She is well enough thought of to be consulted by the Repblican National Commitee, she counts Alan Greenspan as one of her friends....and is an aquaintence of Paul Volcker among others...

Just ONE of the crieteria she watches on a daily basis with any stock she is interested in is it's daily volume....she watches for big blocks of shares being bought or sold....she watches whether the blocks are being bought on the upside or being sold on the downside...this indicates Institutional Investing....and she never lays off big blocks of shares at once....but in a gradual fashion so as not to stir the markets and tip her hand....

Another key is...Every stock trades in a range....low to high...Obviously the best place to buy is when a stock has come off of it's low and is climbing again in it's range....you take it up and sell.....and when it falls again you buy again....MOT has been very very good to me over the past 2 years....I had 5000 shares under $10 took it to the $20 range and sold most of it, bought back in around $15, took it to $18 and sold, and am now back in at $15..... you tend to do this with smaller and smaller blocks of shares as a stock will tend to reach a state of equlibrium...

Right now the stock market seems to be building a base of higher lows.....

Ohhh Well...thats enough for now, Tabbys adled brain has been taxed enough for on mornining...