THE LONG GRAY HALLWAY

Raise your hand if you remember the opening scene, a long gray hallway in a Los Angeles hotel, in the Pink Floyd movie “The Wall!” Remember the cleaning woman switching on a vacuum cleaner and then goes about her business, while inside one of the hotel rooms, “Pink” (Bob Geldof), oblivious to the outside distractions, sits listlessly staring at a television. The flickering, blue-black images resolve into historical footage from World War II, and Pink sees his father killed at the Battle of Anzio.

Well, there are hallways, mostly in hotels, that often remind me of that opening scene. This past week, in a hallway in the building where Smith Barney is housed in Knoxville, I again had that sort of “de’ja’vu feeling” when I rounded a corner and started down the hall to a conference room. There, along the walls, were those half-moon lights, simultaneously spraying light toward the ceiling and diffusing light toward the hall floor, lining the corridor just like in the movie.

In my head I could hear the conversational sounds coming from that TV set in the movie, the sound of the dive-bomber as it released its payload, the vacuum cleaner purring, and the tap, tap, tapping on the hotel door the cleaning lady made as she fumbled her key-ring for the master key.

Some movie scenes, especially those with great sound tracks, are burned into my brain forever, and this is one of my favorites.

The conference room reminded me of nothing in “The Wall”, but out in the hallway, I heard the click as someone started up a vacuum. It was almost surreal, but only to me…the old “Sixties Kind of Man!”

Two other concerned mutual fund investors and I were greeted by our “money men,” Doug Whitman and Scott Rhea (Rhea Whitman Group). We all exchanged pleasantries, then Doug handed us our box lunch (ham sandwich, a fruit assortment, two chocolate cookies, and a cold bottle of water), and we sat down around a long typical conference room table lined by comfortable gray leather chairs.

The topic of the day was “Market Volatility and the Long-Term Investor”. Many people have naturally called the group asking questions related to the recent market fluctuations, the housing market, bank failures, and the “bailout!”

So what does this have to do with Pink Floyd and a “long gray hallway”? Nothing I suppose, just a way of getting to tell you about Scott’s reassuring talk Wednesday, and then a way of wrapping up the tale. His words and graphics really did put my mind at ease.

Back in 2005, I rolled my 401K, managed by Department of Energy, over to a mutual fund package managed today by Scott and Doug’s group, who are a part of Smith Barney and ultimately the Citigroup, Inc. They believe, as I do, that you must “wait out the storm”, and trust that your portfolio will have cumulative growth over time.

This is but one downturn of the market – there have been many, and there will be others. However, the history of the market proves out that the end result will be growth of a properly invested and diversified portfolio.

In fact, the best time to invest (any amount) in the market is when you are at the bottom of a “Bear Market”. Are we there? Only time will tell. But buying shares while costs are low can only mean the cumulative value of those shares will eventually increase!

So, while we walk down this “long gray hallway” of uncertainty, let us have faith in America, and believe that the odds are in the favor of the long-term investor – the bulls! Now is not the time to pull out and give up. Now is the time to buy and/or hold!