| Income Issue News Items The were a couple of noteworthy items in the income investing arena this past week. 1st off it was announced late Friday that REIT Campus Crest (ticker:CCG)is to be acquired. Campus Crest has a preferred issue outstanding that currently has dividends suspended. Our understanding is that the issue will be REDEEMED in early 2016. Shares are now trading around $24 and should be redeemed in the $27 area. There may be a small opportunity for a gain of 5-6% in 4 months here. Little Energy company FX Energy (ticker:FXCN) is being bought and has a convertible preferred that is being redeemed at $25 if the deal closes. Shares were trading at $19 last Monday but jumped to around $24–a nice speculative profit. We don’t follow convertible issues–also we don’t speculate. Economic News for the Coming Week This will be a quiet week for important economic news in the U.S. On Tuesday we have Housing Starts Announced as well as the Redbook report on retail sales at department and chain retail outlets as well as department stores. Retail sales have been falling all year and our guess is this will continue and will keep the 10 year treasury at the current low level. On Wednesday we have just the EIA petroleum inventories–they took a massive jump last week, although crude prices didn’t tumble hard on the news. We would think that crude oil prices would continue to move back down this week which is likely to put common stocks in the energy area under pressure. Thursday brings jobless claims, Chicago Fed activity report, the Bloomberg Consumer Comfort report, existing homes sales and the Leading Indicators report. We believe these will all comfirm a slowdown in the economy and will be taken in stride as investors are already baking in a soft economy–witness the 2.02% 10 year treasury. Friday brings only the PMI Manufacturing Index and this will be soft also as every regional manufacturing index reading in the last month has been pitiful. Likely the biggest item in the common stock arena will be earnings announcements as over 100 S&P 500 companies report this week. A large number of negative reports will serve to keep interest rates in check and we will watch for indicators of a coming recession. | 
Connect with Tim McPartland
