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RETIREMENT PLANS

Investment Resources

INVESTMENT TRACKING AND ADVISORY SERVICES

• Morningstar Mutual Fund—This is a comprehensive, easy-to-use manual that reviews each of the mutual fund families in the Duke retirement plans, as well as many others. It includes a rating system and biweekly updates in a loose-leaf format available at Benefits Administration, as well as many local libraries.  You can find out this and more at Other Retirement Links.

SEMINARS & WORKSHOPS

• Pre-Retirement Seminars—Benefits Administration sponsors two Pre-Retirement Seminars each year. These are typically held each fall and spring. Employees and faculty members age 50 and older are invited to attend. The seminars are free, but reservations are required because space is limited. These seminars will help you to evaluate your plans in light of social and economic implications surrounding retirement income, Social Security, and health care. The information presented should help participants evaluate their financial position as well as their lifestyle objectives. Contact the Human Resources Information Center (HRIC) (684-5600) for specific dates and reservations.

• How to Research Your Own Investments—Duke Benefits also offers a one-hour seminar entitled "How to Research Your Own Investments." This seminar is held once a month in the 705 Broad Street, Conference Room 03. Contact Benefits Administration at 684-5600 for seminar dates and to reserve a seat.

ONLINE RESOURCES

• Investment Vendors Page—This web page will direct you to the web sites of each of Duke's five retirement vendors. These sites can provide you with more information about the vendor with whom you are investing, as well as more about investing in general. In addition, this site also contains contact information for each vendor.

PUBLICATIONS

Duke Publications

• Annual Benefits Statement—Duke provides full-time employees with a comprehensive and customized annual summary of their benefits. This summary, entitled "Your Personal Statement of Benefits," is sent to your home address in the spring before the Benefits Fair. Approximately four pages of the summary are dedicated to retirement planning.

• Investment Performance Summary—This publication contains quarterly performance data on all of the investment options available through Duke. Benefits Administration distributes the Investment Performance Summary via the web each quarter. Please note that the data contained in the Investment Performance Summary reflects past performance, and is not in any way a guarantee of future results. Therefore, investment decisions should not be based upon the contents of this publication alone.

Independent Publications

Many of the publications listed below can be found at local and Duke University libraries. Most of the vendors offering investments through Duke publish newsletters that can be very useful as well.

Personal finance and investing publications are also useful in life planning. We have excluded the many periodicals that fall into this category. Please check with the reference librarian or index periodicals for a complete list of personal finance and investment publications.

• Barrons—A principal source of investment information for many people who follow the financial news regularly. Published weekly, it carries mutual fund performance data for the prior week and many articles of interest to retirement investors.

• Business Week—Weekly publication written for people who want to stay up-to-date on news and trends that impact the economy. Highlights include updates in management trends, marketing, Wall Street dealings, finances, and news of the national/international markets. Occasionally publishes a mutual fund scoreboard.

• Forbes—Published biweekly, this publication targets managers of U.S. companies as well as professional and private investors involved in the stock and securities market.

• Fortune—Published biweekly, this publication presents business and personal management guidelines. Regular features include reports on investment trends, updates on the management behind the trends, and analysis of the effects of current events on the business world.

• Investor's Business Daily—A financial news-oriented daily newspaper that focuses on news of interest to investors, including a daily listing of mutual fund closing prices.

• Standard & Poor's Outlook—A weekly publication focusing on the performance of securities from individual corporations. The Outlook also covers market conditions and opportunities for the short-term and the long-term investor.

• Value Line—This publication primarily reports on the performance statistics of publicly-traded corporations. This resource may have more value for the individual investor than for the mutual fund investor, but the information about industry and economic trends can be very helpful to 403(b) participants.

• Wall Street Journal—National financial newspaper published daily during the business week. In addition to comprehensive business news coverage, the performance of mutual funds is reported in each issue. The listing changes each weekday to show various time frames of performance with ratings provided by Lipper Analytical Services and other fund data.

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