Investment Alchemy

How good an investment did First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton make when she turned $1,000 into $99,000 over 10 months during the late 1970s largely by trading in cattle futures?

Consider the following comparisons:

In 10 months she made about three times what she would have made over 15 years had she invested the money in Fidelity Magellan, by far the best performing mutual fund in that period.

According to Lipper Analytical Services Inc., had Clinton invested the same $1,000 in the Magellan Fund on Dec. 31, 1978, it would only have been worth a mere $33,363.80 last Dec. 31.

Had she invested the $1,000 in the second-best performing fund, CGM Capital Development, she would have had $28,167 by the end of last year.

And the $1,000 invested in Aim Constellation, the third-best performer, would be worth only $18,574.50.

Missed Scoring Opportunities

The playoff hopes of the Lakers, Kings, Clippers and Mighty Ducks are either fading fast or have vanished. So what does it mean to the bottom lines of the local sports teams?

Jerry Gorman, national director of Ernst & Young’s sports practice and co-author of the new book “The Name of the Game: The Business of Sport,” says making the playoffs can mean from $250,000 to $500,000 a game in revenue for a pro basketball team depending on the size of the team’s market and arena.

For a hockey team, he says, each playoff game can mean from $300,000 to $600,000.

He says the amount is higher because there are more local television opportunities for hockey because basketball has its network television deal.

For the publicly traded Boston Celtics franchise, he adds, being shut out of the playoffs this year would mean about two cents a share per game for investors.

The Write Trend

Ever on the cutting edge, some in Hollywood are now putting their x and y on the dotted line.

Art Guard International in Los Angeles is marketing to the rich and famous what it calls “The Worlds First DNA Gene Pen.” According to promotional materials, “Your DNA Gene signature provides absolute and verifiable authenticity for any document.”

The pen isn’t cheap. Charles Butwell, the company’s president, says it costs some $2,500 for the DNA work and about $50 a pen after that.

He says his clients include executives at such firms as Hanna-Barbera and Warner Bros., along with celebrities whose genetically accurate remain anonymous.

Briefly. . .

North Hollywood-based Masada Marketing is selling salts from the Dead Sea that people can put into their baths at home. . .One way to cut down: “The Entrepreneur Expo” in Long Beach next weekend will display among other things a vending machine that dispenses one cigarette at a time. . . Something to ponder: A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research is titled “Is the Business Cycle a Necessary Consequence of Stochastic Growth?”