SIMI VALLEY : License Plate a Stock Market Prognosticator

More than two years ago, Roy Newman of Simi Valley fitted his Cadillac Seville with a vanity license plate to herald what he anticipated soon would be a historic milestone for the stock market. It read, “Dow 3,500.”

The Dow Jones market index exceeded Newman’s expectations this week, reaching 3,500 for the first time and making his license plate as topical as today’s news.

Still, the wait stretched the man’s patience.

“At one time, I jokingly suggested that I might change it to Dow 2,500, because it started going down,” Newman, 63, said.

The owner of a diversified, six-figure portfolio of mutual funds, stocks and an IRA, Newman tries not to worry about day-to-day market fluctuations. He’s bullish in that sense, he said.

“In the short term, I’m not so bullish, because there’s a lot of uncertainty in the market with Clinton and what he might do with the health plan and new taxes,” Newman said.

A retired program analyst with the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program, Newman said he began investing after teaching himself by reading financial magazines and watching investment programs on television.

His holdings weren’t seriously hurt by the market’s 500-point plunge in October, 1987, because he had pulled money from his investments to buy a house, he said. His patient philosophy also protects him from sudden dips, he added.

“I’m not a speculator or trader,” Newman said. “I really don’t sell that many.”

His advice for those planning to enter the market is to hold on. “The time to buy is when you have money to buy,” Newman said. “If you ignore the daily trends of the market, the trend eventually is up.”