Elle wrote:
- quote -

Yes. Thanks for that link! I have about $20000 worth of my employer's
common stock in my taxable portfolio. That's a large percentage of my
semi-liquid assets. I'm thinking about selling it all and buying a
variety of bonds and true preferreds with the money to balance things
out a little. If the company does an Enron, I don't want to lose my job
and my investments at the same time.

- quote -


I think even if GM stops paying dividends, it will have to keep paying
GJM interest payments or else it will be in default. From the
prosepectus (which I've read a couple of times and still don't totally
understand):

- quote -


Since the debt is unsecured though, I'm not sure what happens if GM does
default. Hopefully I won't find out. They can pay up to 29 days late,
but they cannot suspend payments.

Best regards,
Bob

Hi Bob,

My hybrids (two ETDS's, two traditional preferreds, one TPS) took a hit
this week (Friday especially?), too. Not a serious one, but considering
they were up consistently for a month or so, I took note. They're a tiny
part of my portfolio, to goose my income a wee bit, like your plan. I too
look at them as long-term holdings, in the worst case. Assuming no
bankruptcies etc., then I'm "stuck" with something that yields 6% (for my
holdings) for the next thirty years. Hopefully I'll be transferring these
over, slowly but surely, to stocks that actually show growth both in
principal and in dividends over time.

GJM's Moody etc. rating is still a little too low for my taste. I hope
you've hit quantumonline.com and tried their income tables to see if
perhaps there's something more appealing to you. Not to step on your toes
or anything. Then again I see from finance.yahoo 's charts that it took a
similar dive and then recovered in January. Maybe it'll come back up. Or
maybe GM will stop paying dividends altogether! Dunno the whole story right
now. Just saying.

Thanks for the update. It adds to my experience.

"zxcvbob" <zxcvbob[at]charter.net> wrote
- quote -

Last week I mentioned exchange traded debt securities as a way to goose
the interest yield on ones cash reserves? You warned that that was a
bad idea. Since then, a senior unsecuried bond I've been watching
(ticker GJM) has dropped about 5% in in value. In just a week. That's
not a big deal if your time horizon is large, but would be awful if it
was a significant part of someone's emergency funds and they took a 5 or
10% hit and then had to take out the money before ever collecting any
interest payments (and the broker fees for a final insult).

I just thought I should mention it since the example makes your point.

I also might buy some GJM next week as a long-term holding.

Thanks, regards,
Bob