Annual Forum to Explore Investment Options

Like many Americans, when it comes to building a retirement nest egg, Ventura County residents are depending less on pensions and increasing home values and more on investments, says John Grace, manager of the Westlake branch of Financial Network Investment Corp.

And with good reason, he said.

“The Dow Jones industrial average went up about 1,000 points [to about 5,000] between December 1994 and December 1995,” he said. “That makes Ventura County residents more secure in making large investments.”

To help guide these investors, Grace’s brokerage office will host its seventh annual Economic Forum Wednesday at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

John Cleland, chief investment strategist for the Kansas-based Security Benefit Group of Companies, will be the featured speaker, discussing the U.S. economy, foreign and domestic stocks and bonds and what effect the national political scene will have on investments this year.

A panel of four experts from around the country will discuss various investment options in real estate, oil and gas and other industries that have seen slumps of late but may be ready for an upswing, Grace said.

Grace said some investment experts think the success of 1995 will continue. Others, he said, anticipate a reversal of fortunes.

“You had to be sitting on a real dog not to see a 20% to 40% return on U.S. equities in 1995,” he said. “There’s a strong chance the Dow Jones will reach 8,000 to 12,000 [points] by the end of the decade. But some people look at 1995 and say it was such an extraordinary year, with lots of returns, that a correction must be imminent.”

Grace said the Economic Forum should provide local investors with a clearer forecast.

“If people get a sense that interest rates are going to go up or down, or the market is going to tank,” he said, “they are going to make different decisions.”

The program will run from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Civic Arts Plaza’s Forum Theatre.

Tickets are $15, with proceeds benefiting Child Abuse and Neglect Inc., a nonprofit, countywide organization dedicated to preventing, intervening in and treating cases of child abuse and neglect.