FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – March 24, 2000
A. Richard Taft, senior vice president of ABN AMRO and a balanced portfolio manager, will be the guest this month on the cable access show Financial Solutions that airs in numerous northern Cook County and southern Lake County communities in Illinois. The topic of this month’s show will be the Year 2000 Investment Perspective.
This month’s program focuses on the U.S. economy, interest rate predictions, the stock and bond markets and where you should be investing your money in the year 2000. We now know that 1999 was a year to be globally invested, where technology was king and the U.S. market continued to narrow with half of last year’s return in the S & P 500 stocks coming from only eight stocks.
The numbers are even worse for the S & P 500. Less than half of the stocks gave a positive return for 1999 and 63% of the stocks gave returns less than 10%. The largest 100 companies contributed 17.1% or over 80% of the S & P 500’s 21.04% annual return. If an investor did not own those 100 stocks, they likely did not participate in the last year gains.
A Richard Taft currently manages money for a wide range of clients including high net worth individuals, foundations and corporate profit sharing plans, each with their own unique goals, time lines and tax situations. His portfolios normally hold stable growth common stocks and high quality bonds.
Taft graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in Psychology and Economics. He received a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Chicago Bar Association, the Dartmouth Lawyers Association and the Chicago Estate Planning Council. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has worked in portfolio management, corporate finance, venture capital and personal financial planning. He has also taught finance and portfolio management at Loyola’s Graduate School of Business.
The show will air on AT&T Cable once a week at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday’s for the entire month of February. The program reaches 105,000 subscribers on channel 35 in Arlington Heights, Bartlett, Des Plaines, Glenview, Golf, Hanover Park, Mt. Prospect, Northbrook, Park Ridge, Prospect Heights, Schaumburg, Skokie, Streamwood and Wheeling. The show will also be broadcast on Channel 19 at the same time to 120,000 subscribers in Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Lincolnwood, Morton Grove, Niles, Northfield, Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Wilmette.
Financial Solutions is produced by Patrick Doland, CFP™, a fee only financial planner and investment manager in Northbrook and is intended to help viewers address their questions on investments, retirement planning, education planning, insurance, and estate planning.
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