Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 15

Herald Review April 12, 1995 Decatur, Illinois On A wm mm wm mm mmwf I '4V III Of Mutual Interest nl mrroi fn rVrm if nn fo Survey: Economic prosperity hasn't extended to consumers CURRIER All in all, Americans were fretting less about money than last year, the results showed. An unexpected $1,000 bill would cause trouble for only 39 percent, down from 48 percent last year. Fifty-five percent said they worry often about money, compared with 61 percent last year. Even the specter of layoffs amid the continued trend in downsizing spooked fewer SURVEY Continued onC2 make me happy? When do I get a raise?" the president said in an interview with Money concerning the survey results. The survey, conducted for Money by Wil-lard Shullman, a Greenwich, Conn, research firm, was based on a mailed survey directed to the main financial decisionmaker in a representative sample of households nationwide.

Respondents were more than 2-1 male, but responses were otherwise adjusted to reflect the population. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percent. respondents said the best way to get rich was to play the lottery. "This puzzling sense of gloom amid relative prosperity pervades the results of our 1995 Americans and Their Money poll," said the magazine, which published the national poll in its May issue, distributed Wednesday. The problem worries President Clinton, whose approval ratings have sagged while the economy has expanded.

People "read these good economic numbers. Well, they ask, when it is going to NEW YORK (AP) Many Americans are worrying less about the status of their pocketbooks, yet believe the country is on a long-term slide and don't trust government a whit. Money magazine's 10th poll on "Americans and Their Money" highlights the pessimism about the future that people feel even amid evidence that the economy is growing at a healthy clip. In one telling sign about people's view of the future or perhaps just about a belief in their own luck 11 percent of the 1,416 Bank binge in market a lot of buU Bin fxM 1' boost outlook 5. v.

By GARY MINICH Staff Writer Area favorite returns, adding to the fare at Swartz Waterfront Grill. DECATUR The Chili Parlor is back in business. Devotees can find former Chili Parlor proprietor Te- A mmmmmmmmm' resa Thornton seven days a week at Swartz Waterfront Grill, dishing out "fire-bowl" chili and foot-long chili dogs, along with other menu items missing the past seven years. Thornton and her husband, Denny, ran the Jasper Street cafe from 1976 to 1988. Since selling the business, Teresa Thornton has worked a number of jobs, including lab technician at St.

Mary's Hospital. But fans of her chili and foot-long dogs kept telling her how much they missed the Chili Parlor. So, she approached Keith Ashby, owner of Swartz Waterfront Grill, about leasing the Nelson Park location during the months it is usually closed: November through March. Ashby made a counter offer of a "joint venture" and Thornton opened the grill as manager in late March. "I'm real excited about teaming up with Keith.

We've known each other for many years," she said. In fact, she was a waitress at Swartz before her marriage. "Keith would always help me any time I needed to cater Chili Parlor chili," Thornton said. "He would loan me pots or equipment and take chili or dogs as payment." She's been overrun with former Chili Parlor customers. The menu keeps Swartz's burger, walleye and grilled chicken sandwiches and adds the old Chili Parlor favorites: chili, chili mac, chili burgers, ta-males, chili dogs and corn dogs.

Chili comes in four grades of spiciness: Medium, medium hot, hot and fire bowl. "We plan to put up a fire board," said Thornton, explaining that anyone who can eat a bowl of fire-bowl chili without drinking gets their name on the board. "If they survive," Ashby added. Thornton will operate the lakeside cafe year-round. Outdoor seating will be available and the interior which was decorated in 1994 can handle up to 60 customers at once.

Waterfront Grill and Chili Parlor is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily and will stay open until 9 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays after Memorial Day. Market rallies briefly, then drops after questions on its view of interest rates.

WASHINGTON (AP) The cost of energy and food fell at the wholesale level in March, giving the country its best news on prices in five months and suggesting the economy was still on the Federal Reserve's glide path for a "soft landing." The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its Producer Price Index, after posting worrisome gains of 0.3 percent in both January and February, showed no increase at all in March, as the price of gasoline, autos and women's clothing dropped. Financial markets initially rallied on the news with economists taking heart from the fact that the steep slide in the dollar has so far failed to show up in higher prices. But the market gains melted away later in the day. The stock market followed bond prices lower after remarks by Federal Reserve board member Janet Yellen called into question the market's view that the Fed is through raising interest rates. With one hour to go, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 4.15 to 4,194.

Stocks have been pushed to record levels in recent weeks as various economic reports seemed to indicate the Fed's string of seven rate increases had accomplished the goal of slowing activity and keeping inflation under control. Even with the jitters in the markets, many economists said the PPI report added to their convictions that the central bank has put any further credit tightening on hold. The March figures for inflation at the retail level will be released Wednesday. Some analysts said the better-than-expected wholesale number was causing them to revise downward their forecast for a rise in the Consumer Price Index. Bruce Steinberg, an analyst at Merrill Lynch in New York, said he was looking for consumer prices this year to be up 3.25 percent, only a slight increase from the 2.7 percent gains registered in both 1994 and 1993.

"Any pickup in inflation will be minimal this year," Steinberg said. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, speaking to a gathering of central bank officials in Stockholm, hailed the "dramatic slowdown in the rate of price inflation on a worldwide basis" while emphasizing that "it is important that this progress continue." NEW YORK (AP) The plot has taken an unexpected twist lately in one of the great sagas of mutual-fund investing in the '90s: The Invasion of the Banks. If you've been following the story so far, you know that banks have been engaged for several years in an all-out campaign to get in on the lucrative businesses of selling and managing mutual funds. As this juggernaut rumbled across the landscape, it was going to bring radical changes in the way Americans bought and sold fund shares perhaps turning the whole business into just another function of the automatic teller machine. Regulators went on the alert to try to protect a new, less sophisticated group of individuals, traditional bank customers, from confusion about the safety and suitability of funds.

IT TURNS OUT, however, that the supposedly inexorable advance of the banks abruptly slowed in 1994. Now, in the eyes of some observers anyway, the prospective role banks are likely ever to play in the fund business has been scaled back significantly. "I'm not writing the banks off altogether," says Eli Neusner at the management consulting firm of Cerulli Associates in Boston, which has just published a study of the state of banks in the securities industry. "They'll always be in the game," he said. "But I think the anticipation of banks becoming market leaders is unfounded." Until last year, banks' share of total mutual fund sales had been climbing steadily, hitting 14 percent in 1992 and 15 percent in 1993.

Many said the figure was on its way to 25 percent or more in the next few years. But in 1994, Cerulli says, it dropped off to 11 percent. OTHER FINDINGS of the study: Among 12 leading fund management companies, the number of new shares sold last year through banks fell 32 percent from 1993. The number of banks starting their own "proprietary" funds or fund families shrank to seven in '94 from 18 the year before. What went wrong, by Ce-rulli's account, had a lot to do with 1994's yearlong upturn in interest rates, a weak bond market and a stalemated stock market.

The people most likely to buy funds at banks were apparently conservative investors who were unsettled by the convulsions that hit bonds and bond funds. At the same time, the firm says, "bank management turned more of its attention to its traditional lending business, and less to the securities operations that it had recently proclaimed as its business of the future. SO FAR in 1995, the investment market climate has been much kinder than it was in 1994.But Neusner says there have been no signs to date of a resurgence of fund business for banks. A few individual banks have already established themselves as vigorous forces in mutual funds. Some others seem to have taken the setback of the past year as cause to regroup, rather than retreat, Neusner says.

But there is a lot less credence these days to the idea that banks, having lost a big chunk of their consumer franchise to mutual funds, would rise up in retaliation and devour their new rival. Chet Currier is an AP business writer who specializes in personal-finance topics. Of Mutual Interest appears Wednesdays in the Herald Review. Herald ReviewHerb Slodounik SHE'S BACK: Chili Parlor operator Teresa Thornton has teamed up with Keith Ashby, reviving her long-closed Jasper Street diner in a joint operation with Ash-by's Swartz Waterfront Grill in Nelson Park. (s sale to investors group led by Zurich temper Oc Zurich Insurance is Switzerland's second-largest property and casualty insurer, and has been expanding its presence in the United States.

It would own 51 percent of Kemper under the proposed deal. Insurance Partners, an investment group whose major partners are Zurich Insurance subsidiary Centre Reinsurance Holdings; Robert Bass' Keystone and Chase Manhattan would own 49 percent. Rolf Hueppi, president and chief executive of Zurich Insurance, said acquiring Kemper which employs 6,000 and is based in the Chicago suburb of Long Grove would raise his company's profile in North America. Purchase price winds up far less than offer spurned in bidding war. CHICAGO (AP) Kemper Corp.

took itseli off the auction block Tuesday by announcing it has agreed to be bought by Zurich Insurance Group of Switzerland and a group of other investors for about $2 billion. The price tag is 26 percent below that offered by Conseco Inc. last year during a bidding war for Kemper, a financial services company. But analysts say the price reflects the realities of today's financial markets. Kemper, an insurance and mutual-fund com pany, put itself up for sale last year after spurning an offer of $60 a share, or $2.4 billion, from General Electric Co.

It subsequently agreed to be acquired by Conseco Inc. for $67 a share, or $3.25 billion, but the deal fell through in November after Conseco failed to obtain financing. The offer by Zurich Insurance, one of the world's largest insurance companies, values Kemper at $49.50 a share in cash and securities, well below the previous bids but above the company's recent stock price. Kemper's stock rose to close at $45.75 in trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Stocks Grain futures DOW (Industrials) Livestock futures CHICAGO (AP) Futures trading on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange: Open High Low Settle Chg.

CATTLE 64 2.60 1.88 AMR Akorn 1.32 Donlley DowCh DuPont EglFd EqtCos Exxon 40,000 cents per lb. .20 3.00 FalcnPr .08 .40 .02 r-amuir Fastenls Apr Jun Dec Feb 69.70 69.87 67.92 67.92 1.50 63.55 63.85 61.92 61.92 1.50 61.00 61.32 59.47 59.62 62.35 62.72 61.02 61.37 .90 64.30 64.60 63.15 63.45 .77 65.35 65.52 64.15 64.45 .75 66.40 66.50 65.25 65.50 .70 Price report Grain Markets Decatur area prices supplied by ADM Grow mark Tabor Co. Corn S2.40 Beans $5.69 Wheat fiogs Volume Top East St. Louis 1,700 $38 00 Peoria 900 $37.00 Interior 32,000 $37.75 Cattle Volume Top East St. Louis 0 Peoria 0 Apr Est.

sales 24,892. sales 21,705 open int 69,807 FEEDER CATTLE Daily indexes CHICAGO (AP) Futures trading on the Chicago Board ot Trade: Open High Low Settle Chg. WHEAT 5,000 bu minimum; dollars per bushel. May 3.53 3.59 3.52 3.58 .09 Jul 3.53 3.58 3.52 3.58 .07 Sep 3.59 3.64 3.58 3.64 .08 Dec 3.71 3.76 3.70(4 3.76 .08 Mar 3.75 3.80 3.74 3.80 .07 Jul 3.43 3.47 3.43 3.47 .06 sales 15,329 open int 54,094, up 1,971 CORN 5,000 bu minimum; dollars per May 2.5114 2.52 2.50 2.52 .00 Jul 2.58 2.59 2.57 2.58 .00 Sep 2.62 2.6314 2.61 2.62 .00 Dec 2.65 2.67 2.64 2.6614 .00 Mar 2.71 2.72 2.71 2.72 .00 May 2.76 2.77 2.75'4 2.77 .00 Jul 2.7814 2.79 2.77 2.78 .00 Dec 2.58 2.58 2.57 2.57 sales 39,736 open int 371,237 OATS 5,000 bu minimum; dollars per May 1.3714 1.37 1.35'4 1.36'4 .00 Jul 1.42 1.43 1.40 1.41 '4 50,000 cents per lb. 34 73 62 2 3-16 22'A 66 ll 12 24 Vk 29 34 15 24 27 26 34 54 44 46 38 25 19 42 1 100V 34 23 91 2 86 21 14 454 26 36 Aw Last Chg.

68 '4 51 V4 3M-1-16 29 -Vi 78'2'A 24 -'A 44' 62'i Vk 58Mi 21 114'4 25 30 33 V4 'A 24 Vi 1-3-32 21' 53' 28' 16' 7W4 Vi 39'zil'A 16 -H 11 16'A 55 45 39'4 36 57 11 35-l 42 'A 81 28 55 McOnlds .24 34- Merck 1.20 43 MerrLyn .92 44 Micstts 72 13-16 MidRes 1.16 14 MMM 1.88 57 -'A Mobil 3.40 89 Monsan 2.52 80 Navistar 13 NflkSo 2.08 66 PPGs 1.16 37'A Penney 1.92 43 PepsiC .72 40 PhilMr 3.30a 67 PmcoAn 1.88 18 PrctGm 1.40 67 1 RalsRP 1.20 47 Roadmst 2 Sears 1.60 52 Svcmstr .96 23 Sudbury 6 11 16 1-16 Tandy .72 48'A Texaco 3.20 65 Transm 2.00 57 Tycolntl .40 51 'A UALn 109 -1 Unicom 1.60 24 UCarb .75 30 UnElec 2.44 3S Unisys 14 Upjohn 1.48 36 VentSt .58 12 Viacom 46 WMXTc .60 27 WalMart .20 25- Walgrn .78 46 WstgEI .20 1514 Whrlpl 1.36 55 4187.08 11.07 505.53 1.48 273.29 0.69 470.73 0.50 Allstate .78 AHome 3.00 AmStore .54 Amertch 2.00 Amoco 2.40 Anheus 160 Applbee .05 ArchDns .10 AtlRich j.50 AutZone BancOne 1.36 Baxter 1.05 Best Buy Biosvs BobEvn .79 Boeing 1.00 CIPSCO 2.00 CPI .56 CSX 1.76 Cabots .56 CarsPir CartWal .16 Caseys .08 Caterps 1.00 Chevrns 1.85 Chryslr 1.60 Cilcorp 2.46 CocaO 88 ConPd Crninqln .72 DWDsc .64 Deere 220 DetEd 2.06 Disney .36 67.45 67.55 66.00 66.02 1.33 66.60 66.70 65.05 65.30 1.15 67.65 67.95 66.15 66.40 1.17 67.40 67.55 66.10 66.20 67.30 67.50 66.15 66.17 68.45 68.45 67.15 67.20 1.05 68.30 68.30 67.10 67.20 1.05 67.00 67.00 66.25 66.25 .75 May Aug Sep Oct Nov Jan Federss FedPB 1.20 FstAm 1.68 FtFnCp .48 FWidBc .76 Fstbkllls .88 FordMs 1.04 GTE 1.88 GenEls 1.64 EnMotr .80 drich 2.20 Goodyer 1.00 GrndMt 1.09e Hanson 1.17e HmeDep .16 ITTCp 1.98 IlliCtr 1.00 llllnova 1.00 Intel IBM 1.00 lowallG 1.73 Kmart .96 Kemper .92 Kroger LeeEnt 88 Dow Jones Industrials 500 NYSE Composite Amex Index NASD Composite NMS Composite Value Line Geometric Value Line Arithmetic 824.83 368.54 294.24 Inside the markets NYSE Motorola, down 1 to 54 in NYSE-leading volume ot more than 11 million shares The company posted quarterly results that were slightly lower than Wall Street expected. First-quarter income came to 61 cents a share, up from 51 cents a year earlier. The Investment rating on the stock was raised to "buy" from "attractive" by a Paine-Webber analyst. NASDAQ Intel, up 2 to 91 Va in Nasdaq-leading volume of more than 10.8 million shares The stock got a boost from an industry report depicting strong demand for computer chips. Also, investment firm S.G.

Warburg said in a research note that it was raising its forecast of 1995 shipments of Intel's Pentium chips amid reports that the personal computer market is shifting in favor of the Pentium. 3.57 1.67 0.03 0.13 Off Mar 486.80 Est. sales 2,880. sales 1,879 Metals Wilshire 5000 was $4,962,179 Tuesday, Mon. open int 11,846 HOGS S4.au dm i ion rrom monaay.

40,000 cents per lb. Jtl.gU JOD J.J3 JD.H Apr Jun .30 .0014 Bonds Sep 1.45 1.45 1.45 1.45 Dec 1.50 1.50 1.4914 1.50 Mar 1.55 May 1.59 NEW YORK (AP) Spot commodity prices (Wholesale): Prev. Year Today Day Age Aluminum 84.0 84.0 59 1 Copper 1 43 1.43 91 Gold 390.00 389 378 00 Silver 5.355 5.2X 5.280 Jul Aug 44.85 45.05 44.25 44.35 44.60 43.85 43.50 43.70 43.12 40.45 40.72 40.22 41.12 41.15 40.95 3cf Ocf LinBrd 123 15-16-1 1-16 LlncNatl 1.72 44.00 43.42 40.40 41.00 41.62 41.40 46.35 41 32 1 Lowes .18 Dec Feb Apr MagGp .80 20 41.50 41.52 41.40 46 20 46.35 46.20 jun Est. sales 5,767. sales 9,417 Crude oil open int PORK BELLIES NEW YORK (AP) Key barometers in the Treasury market as of 4:30 p.m.

CST. Yield Pvs 30-year bond 7.37 7.40 10-year note 7.07 7.11 1-year bill 6.28 6 30 3-month bill 5.82 5.81 Federal Funds 5.95 6.00 Municipal bonds 6.28 6.29 DM Bond Buyer index of 40 actively traded municipal bonds. 40,000 cents per lb. sales 1,636 open int 15,246, up 86 SOYBEANS 5,000 bu minimum; dollars per May 5.87 5.92 5.87 5.89 .05 Jul 6.00 6 04 5.98 6.01 .05 Aug 6.04 6.08 6.04 6.06 .05 Sep 6.08 6.11 6.0714 6.09 .05 Nov 6.15 6.19 6.14 6.17 .05 Jan 6.22 6.26 6.22 6.24 .05 Mar 6.X 6.32 6.29 6.31 .04 May 6.34 6.37 6.14 6.35 .05 Jul 6.38 6.41 6.38 6.40 .04 Nov 6.08 6.11 6.07 6.11 .05 sales 23,270 open hit 139,070 Mav 41.30 41.85 40.70 41.55 41.95 40.70 39.80 40.10 39.00 51.25 51.25 51.25 new issue in the past 52 weeks split or stock dividend of 25 percent or more in the past 52 weeks paid In stock new 52-week high trading ex-dividend 8- also extra annual rate plus stock dividend new 52-week low declared or paid in preceding 12 months I declared or paid after stock dividend or split-up 41.32 41.30 -J7 39.05 51.22 50.10 51.85 Today Prev. Saudi Arabian light 17 48 16.96 North Sea Brant 18.63 18.11 West Texas I.

19.85 19.55 Alaska-Gulf Coast 18.80 18.50 Alaska-West Coast 18.45 11 .20 Jul Mar Jul Est. sales 1,981. sales 2,393 open int 6,789.