Cannons Marina, Florida’s oldest Grady-White dealer, has earned two prestigious honors from Grady-White Boats – the Grady-White Boats’ Admiral's Circle and Service Excellence Awards – for the 2010 model year.

This is the 12th consecutive year the Longboat Key-based dealer has been honored by Grady-White for its distinguished achievements in the areas of sales and customer satisfaction.

Admiral’s Circle membership is reserved for those top dealerships in the Grady-White network that have achieved at least $1 million in retail sales for the model year, plus also have earned Grady-White’s Service Excellence award with customer satisfaction index scores of at least 9.25 on a 10-point scale as rated in actual customer surveys. These dealerships also must be Marine Industry Certified by the National Marine Manufacturers Association (NMMA), and sponsor a Grady-White owners’ club.

“We’re ecstatic,” said David Miller, owner of Cannons Marina, which has been family- owned and operated since 1955. “The past few years have presented Cannons Marina and the entire marine industry with a great number of challenges. This award reflects the dedication of our entire sales, service and administrative team, and I am truly grateful for their efforts and their perseverance.”

“Cannons Marina recognizes the importance of strong customer relationships and real long term value,” said Joey Weller, Grady-White’s vice president of sales and marketing. “It is no small accomplishment to have achieved these performance levels in a difficult economy. The superior product knowledge, customer skills and service excellence of Cannons Marina, plus Grady-White’s heritage of quality, reliability, safety, and performance, deliver the ultimate boating experience enjoyed uniquely by Grady-White customers.”

Cannons Marina, serving the Manatee and Sarasota County area, is located at 6040 Gulf of Mexico Drive, Longboat Key. Cannons features Grady-White Boats, Scout Boats, SouthWind Boats and Yamaha outboard motors. Visit Cannons.com for more information or call them at 941-383-1311.

Almost every conversation with friends or clients in recent months involves them telling me how bad things are and how worried they are about the economic recovery. I admit that things aren’t exactly wonderful with unemployment over 9 percent and the economy growing slowly compared to the past days of glory we still remember.

But the facts don’t support the case for the extreme pessimism I hear during these conversations. That’s not to say there won’t be struggles ahead, but most economic indicators are showing increased strength, and I would make a bet that most will be surprised at how much better things look down the road a couple years from now and how one of their biggest fears, inflation, just might not be a problem for a quite a while.

Eaton Vance Investment Management Group recently put out a great article highlighting some of the misconceptions that the investing public appears to be using to form its opinions. With credit to Eaton Vance and the author of the article, Mr. Richard Bernstein, I’ll highlight some of the interesting points they brought up.

The U.S. dollar – Contrary to the assumption by most that the stimulus spending and easy money policies of the Federal Reserve would bring about a serious debasement of the dollar, the opposite has occurred. The dollar hit its all time low against an index of all foreign currencies on St. Patrick’s Day of 2008, about 32 months ago. While volatile in the last couple years, the greenback is now about 10 percent higher than before the financial crisis and the subsequent stimulative spending and monetary policies were put in place.

There are several possible reasons for this, including the fact that although the U.S. has fiscal issues to deal with, the challenge is a global one and some other regions have bigger problems than we do.

Most industries are improving – Mr. Bernstein measures the performance of 55 different industries which make up virtually the entire U.S. economy by monitoring capacity utilization. This measurement reveals the percentage of an industry’s capacity to produce what is being used and if it is greater or less than the previous year.

One year ago, only 11 of the 55 industries had shown improvement from 2008. But here in 2010, the study revealed that 46 of the 55 have shown improvement from 2009. This broad-based improvement reveals that across the U.S., the building blocks of the recovery are in place.

As I discussed in an article here in the Sun a few months ago, the dreaded double-dip recession, an event where the economy slips back into a contraction shortly after a recovery starts, hardly ever happens, and when it does, it is the result of a policy mistake by the monetary authorities raising interest rates too soon. Today’s Fed is being criticized for exactly the opposite.

This recovery is not abnormal -– Growth in the economy overall is at the low end of the recovery rates of the last 10 recessions which have taken place since 1949. However, it is closely mimicking the recoveries from the two most recent recessions in 1991 and 2001. Growth in corporate profits is about average and stock price increases are proceeding faster than average for those recovery periods from the last 10 recessions prior to the current one.

I suspect the reason we aren’t doing better on more counts is the continued difficulty related to residential real estate, due to the record breaking extremes that price bubble attained before being burst beginning in 2006.

Expectations too high for emerging markets? – The high octane run for the stock markets of emerging economies has continued into 2010 and is definitely a favorite story of investors at the moment. Mr. Bernstein point out, however, that the companies in the emerging markets have the highest percentage of negative earnings surprises – meaning that the results were less than anticipated by industry analysts. This is the highest negative proportion of any region in the world and is double the percentage of the U.S. bellwether index, the S&P 500, which came in at only 20 percent negative surprises, which is the lowest of any region.

This doesn’t have to portend disaster, but when expectations get too high for an industry, country or region, often price appreciation slows or may be negative in the next period of time. Maybe the U.S. is a good bet versus the emerging markets for the next year or so?

In summary, I’m sure I’ll be hearing the negative talk for a while longer. When it stops, it will be time to start looking for the next correction.

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. Visit www.breitercapital.com.