Businesses that have reached their five-year anniversary have a lot to be proud of. Starting a business from scratch and surviving in a competitive world is no easy thing, something that Michael Gartman owner of Gartman’s Air Care is well aware of and thankful for every day.

For five years, Gartman’s Air Care has been providing air conditioning system servicing and installation to residents in all of Manatee and Sarasota Counties as well as Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key. Its service also includes 24-hour emergency service and maintenance of central vacuum systems.

With environmental and air quality concerns becoming more important every day, Gartman Air continues to provide duct cleaning and sanitation and clothes dryer vent cleaning to its customers. In addition, it is now offering extensive air purification systems for businesses and homes.

The Guardian Air duct air purification system installed by Gartman Air has state of the art technology to remove micro-organisms and odors from the air through the use of germicidal UV light rays. This technology has been used for decades by the medical industry as a method of destroying germs, viruses and bacteria and is now available for non-industrial use.

The latest technology also removes gases and odors from within rooms and ducts providing a continuous purification process while removing over 99 percent of micro-organisms. Gartman is so sure you will see a difference in air quality that he offers a 90-day guarantee.

Michael Gartman is also installing cutting-edge, whole-house dehumidifiers that are more efficient and less expensive than portable single room units. Lower humidity levels helps to prevent the growth of mold and mildew and enhances the comfort of your home while helping to preserve furniture, art work and carpeting.

The Gartman’s Air Care family, which includes Michael Gartman’s wife, Sue, and his 13 year old daughter, Amiee, as well as his five employees, do much more for the community than provide air care. As a company, they are actively involved in community service and annually donate an air conditioning system to one of Habitat For Humanity’s homes.

The Gartmans also sponsor two Florida Special Olympic games, donate turkeys at Thanksgiving, are sponsors of the Great Teddy Bear Run for children with cancer as well as other charity work. But the most fun and distinctive thing the company does as a group is hang Christmas lights and decorate houses for people who can no longer do it themselves. To celebrate his five years in business and thank his loyal customers, Michael Gartman will be offering anniversary specials.

Michael Gartman is bursting with pride over the success of his business and grateful for the love of his family and dedication of his employees. He demonstrates this every day by helping those less fortunate, proving the adage that what goes around comes around. Gartman’s Air Care, business with a commitment to community service.

Gartman’s Air Care

941-748-9777
24-hour emergency service
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While the stock market has continued to struggle so far in 2009, there have been a few rays of sunshine from one of the darkest areas of the financial markets in 2008. As I have highlighted before, this crisis was not created by the bursting of an overvalued stock market bubble. Rather, it has been the bursting of a huge credit bubble, which fueled gains in many asset classes, most recently real estate and commodities, which are now in the process of being corrected.

The credit-driven nature of this collapse caused some normally pretty reliable investments like high quality corporate bonds to suffer declines almost as bad as stocks in 2008. But, while we argue over whether the large stimulus package just passed is a good idea and the stock market continues its bottom hugging ways, we have quietly observed some significant improvement in the condition of the corporate bond market.

All corporate bonds are considered to be riskier than U.S. government bonds, but they fall all along the quality scale ranging from almost as safe as a government bond to very risky bonds issued by corporations that may have a risky future.

Higher quality bonds provide lower yields to the investor because of the safety factor. Lower quality bonds must pay higher yields to entice an investor to buy the bond and take the risk of perhaps losing some principal value if the company issuing the bond defaults. The bonds at the lower end of the quality scale are also known as high yield or junk bonds.

As I’ve reviewed in past articles, higher quality corporate bonds normally pay yields higher than government bonds by a moderate percentage to compensate for the slightly higher risk. Typically, this yield premium is about 1 to 2 percent above the prevailing government rate. Today, due to the present economic fears, quality corporate bonds are yielding 3 to 5 percent above the U.S. government bond yield. Since there is not a large risk of default on these types of bonds, I see this as an interesting opportunity to earn a relatively high yield in today’s very low interest rate environment, without taking excessive risk.

There are many good mutual funds specializing in these quality corporate bonds. The chart below is an exchange traded fund called the iShares Investment Grade Bond Fund (Symbol – LQD). About 75 percent of the fund is invested in bonds with A ratings or higher, and just over 20 percent in Triple-B rated bonds.

This fund currently bears a yield of about 6 percent, well above the 2.75 percent level of a 10-year treasury bond. Here’s a link to a description of bond ratings to give some perspective as to the types of bonds in the fund: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_credit_rating

The fund above was used for illustrative purposes only and is not a recommendation to purchase this fund. All investment decisions should be made considering your investment objectives and risk tolerance. From the chart, you can see that these bonds fluctuate in value, and you should expect fluctuations in bond fund prices in the future.

The opportunity, which we believe will be realized over the next few years as the economy recovers, is the relatively high current yield on higher-quality corporate bonds and the potential for price appreciation as the bonds within the fund mature at face value, which is higher than the present value.

Tom Breiter is president of Breiter Capital Management, Inc., an Anna Maria based investment advisor. He can be reached at 778-1900. Some of the investment concepts highlighted in this column may carry the risk of loss of principal, and investors should determine appropriateness for their personal situation before investing.