Small-time investors turn to the pros

E-Trade, Datek, Ameritrade. If you're not running your own portfolio these days, you're part of the unenlightened minority. Right?

Well, no. Individually managed accounts - investment portfolios that are looked after by an independent financial consultant using an asset-based fee structure - are booming. More people are turning to the pros to manage personal assets as one way to ride out the crests and troughs of an erratic equities market, reports the Washington-based Money Management Institute, the national organization for (you guessed it) the managed-account industry.

In the first nine months of 2000, the Top 5 financial firms for individually managed accounts (Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, PaineWebber, Prudential, and Salomon Smith Barney) reported 29 percent growth in assets to $315 billion.

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society