BEARDSTOWN LADIES SORRY; WOMEN ADMIT RETURN ON STOCK HOLDINGS FAR LOWER THAN TOUTED.Byline: Martha Irvine Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. The Beardstown Ladies The Beardstown Ladies were a group of older women who formed an investment club, formally known as the Beardstown Business and Professional Women's Investment Club, in Beardstown, Illinois, USA. , a group of grandmotherly grand·moth·er·ly adj. 1. Characteristic of or befitting a grandmother. 2. Having the qualities of a grandmother. investors who claimed Wall Street prowess PROWESS Infectious disease A clinical trial–Recombinant Human Activated Protein C [Zovant™] Worldwide Evaluation in Severe Sepsis in two best-selling best·sell·er also best seller n. A product, such as a book, that is among those sold in the largest numbers. best books, admitted Tuesday that the rate of return on their investments was far lower than they had originally estimated. The women recalculated their gains after a Chicago magazine report last month questioned the accuracy of their claims. Betty Sinnock, longtime long·time adj. Having existed or persisted for a long time: a longtime friend; a longtime resident of Detroit. longtime Adjective treasurer of the Beardstown Business and Professional Women's Investment Club, attributed the mistake to a computer input error - probably her own. The women did not, however, add their club dues to the returns, as they originally suspected, she said. ``I guess we were a group of naive senior citizens who just felt real good when the computer gave us that return,'' Sinnock, 66, said Tuesday from her home in Beardstown, 195 miles southwest of Chicago. ``The Beardstown Ladies are just really, really sorry.'' Sinnock said the women thought the 23.4 percent annual return reported was for the 10-year period between 1984-93. But that rate, in fact, only applied to a two-year period for 1991 to 1992, she said. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the accounting firm Price Waterhouse, which did an audit of the club's books, the overall average annual rate of return for the club from its inception 14 years ago through 1997 was 15.3 percent. The rate of return from 1984-1993 was 9.1 percent, well below the 15 percent return of the overall stock market, with dividends reinvested, over the same period. A long-unnoticed disclaimer on the copyright page of the ``The Beardstown Ladies' Common-Sense Investment Guide'' says that the annual return over the decade covered in the book ``includes the dues that the members pay regularly.'' That reference apparently went unnoticed until Chicago magazine published an article last month titled ``Bull Marketing,'' which reported that the rate of return would have been much lower if the dues had not been counted. After the controversy broke last month, the ladies turned over their books to Price Waterhouse, which determined that the errors resulted from incorrect entry of data into the club's computer. The ladies' apparent success and their homespun folksiness made them popular guests on television shows and brought some work as money management experts. NOT QUITE AS GOOD A hypothetical investment of $1,000 would have yielded more according to the Beardstown Ladies' published returns, or even in Dow composite stocks, than their actual results. Touted: $8,187 Dow Jones Dow Jones the best known of several U.S. indexes of movements in price on Wall Street. [Am. Hist.: Payton, 202] See : Finance : $4,935 Actual: $2,389 SOURCE: Daily News Research CAPTION(S): Chart CHART: (Color) NOT QUITE AS GOOD (see text) Daily News |
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