Investors Communications

A few of the estimated 8,000 investors of failed First Pension Corp. in Irvine are networking via computer to vent their frustration about their missing retirement money. Investor Irvin Starr of Hercules in Northern California said he started bringing investors together on the Prodigy network several weeks ago, and now about a dozen use personal computers to share news and anger. "Any information shared will be appreciated," read a Prodigy message from a beleaguered investor at 10:53 p.m.

More mutual fund companies are trying to communicate clearly with all their shareholders: in Spanish, German, Korean, Russian and Vietnamese; in Braille, and on special lines for the hearing-impaired. Fidelity Investments last week started a toll-free telephone service for Spanish-speaking customers. Investors can speak to a bilingual Fidelity sales representative to get fund prospectuses or to open an account.

More mutual fund companies are trying to communicate clearly with all their shareholders: in Spanish, German, Korean, Russian and Vietnamese; in Braille, and on special lines for the hearing-impaired. Fidelity Investments last week started a toll-free telephone service for Spanish-speaking customers. Investors can speak to a bilingual Fidelity sales representative to get fund prospectuses or to open an account.

A few of the estimated 8,000 investors of failed First Pension Corp. in Irvine are networking via computer to vent their frustration about their missing retirement money. Investor Irvin Starr of Hercules in Northern California said he started bringing investors together on the Prodigy network several weeks ago, and now about a dozen use personal computers to share news and anger. "Any information shared will be appreciated," read a Prodigy message from a beleaguered investor at 10:53 p.m.

The phone is finally ringing for telecom mutual fund investors. After suffering through subpar returns in 1995 and 1996, telecom fund shareholders have reaped a bonanza over the last 12 months. The telecom fund sector has been the top domestic stock fund category so far this year, with a 22% average total return through Friday, according to fund tracker Morningstar Inc. That handily beat the 14.7% return on the blue-chip Standard & Poor's 500 index in the same period.

A few years after founding Washington-based Black Entertainment Television in 1980, owner Robert Johnson boasted that the nation's only black-owned cable network--then barely breaking even with B-movies and music videos--would be showing more costly dramatic series and soap operas "as early as 1986."

Among mutual funds, there's bad in this market decline and then there's worse--in some cases, much worse. With Monday's plunge, technology-focused stock funds saw their already-severe losses deepen, of course. For some, that meant that their 12-month declines pushed past the 50% mark. For others, the losses are far beyond the halfway mark and are nearing 90%. Not surprisingly, so-called pure-play Internet stock funds or those with heavy Internet exposure have been decimated.

They call it "filing for dollars." Savvy investors and communications lawyers have developed it into a nearly risk-free means of getting rich. Here's a simplified version of how it works: The Federal Communications Commission plans to award a new FM radio license. You apply for the license, along with a dozen or so others, even though you may have no intention of ever operating a station. But that doesn't matter. You hang on, through a hearing process that takes three to five years.