The Anna Maria Island Sun Newspaper

Vol. 13 No. 16 - January 30, 2013

BUSINESS

Bistro offspring gets honor

The judges at the Golden Spoon are in love with Sean Murphy’s Beach Bistro and now they’re saying “Eat here,” when talking about his newest restaurants. The Eat Here Restaurants at 5315 Gulf Drive, in Holmes Beach, and 1888 Main St., in Sarasota, have won the Golden Spoon “Best New Restaurants in Florida” Award

Murphy was profoundly moved by the award.

“It was an amazing thrill and it took me back to the Bistro’s first Golden Spoon Award,” he said. “To be recognized by Florida Trend is particularly gratifying when there are so many online selection processes that are subject to bias and abuse. Florida Trend still has a great deal of authority and culinary integrity. Chris Sherman is one of the few truly passionate and qualified restaurant critics that is still writing.”

The Golden Spoon recognition for Eat Here follows on the recent announcement by ZAGAT that the Beach Bistro was awarded “Best Food” status for the Gulf Coast. The Bistro has consistently garnered some of the highest scores for food and service in Florida and was selected by ZAGAT for inclusion in its small guide to the “Top Restaurants in America”.

Murphy was asked to explain the difference between his Bistro and Eat Here operations:

“At the Bistro, we are trying to honor your special occasion by giving you one of the best dining experiences that you have ever had,” he said. “The Eat Here concept is meant to be less sacrosanct and more frolicsome than the Beach Bistro’s.

“The two Eat Here restaurants on Anna Maria and in Sarasota had won ‘Best New’ kudos by local newspapers and magazines in their neighborhoods, but the statewide Florida Trend recognition was a particular endorsement of all the creative work that the Eat Here service and chef staffs have accomplished over the past year,” he said. “The ZAGAT and Florida Trend recognition helped bring Christmas early for us.”

A new Eat Here will be opening in Siesta Village on Siesta Key later this month.

The Eat Here restaurants serve more casual and lighter versions of Beach Bistro culinary creations. The Chef staffs are trained by Bistro Chefs. They focus Bistro methods on more accessible products to create dishes at pricing for more casual, every day dining. The Eat Here bars offer classic and creative cocktails and family crafted beers and wines.

To contact Eat Here, call 778-0411 in Holmes Beach and 941-365-8700 in Sarasota or log onto www.eathereannamaria.com or www.eatheresarasota.com.

Anna Maria Island Sun News Story

A story of two barometers

Investment Corner

There is no shortage of Wall Street adages related to the calendar. These range from the likelihood of a good year based on where we are in the presidential election cycle to where the year lies within the decade, to the one I want to highlight today – the January barometer.

There are two versions of the January barometer. Both are said to predict the stock market’s direction for the full year after observing the success, or lack thereof, in either the first five trading days of January, or the full first month of the year performance. Both have reasonably good track records, but like any indicator which averages enough time together to make a prediction, there will be exceptions to the rule.

The full month version has seemed to lose effectiveness since the year 2000. Since the start of the new century, there have been seven January’s with negative returns. The market has had only four negative return years during that time and only three of these coincided with a negative January.

The other version of the barometer, the one which examines the positive or negative return for stocks in the first five trading days of the year, seems to do a bit better, even in the last 12 years. There also seems to be some importance of the extent of the gains over this first five trading day period. If the gains are substantial enough, the indicator has been pretty fool-proof, at least since the year 2000.

This is an admittedly small sample size, but it appears that when the S&P 500 has a gain of over 1.7 percent in the first five trading days of the year, the market has had a positive full-year performance every time. There have been five cases in the last 12 years, and the returns by the end of the year were in double digits (>10 percent) in four of these five times with the fifth case being up a not-so-shabby 8.99 percent. The average result across all five of these years was a very nice 14.98 percent return.

The indicator also seems to be pretty good at identifying potentially poor full year performances.. Since the year 2000, there have been four cases where the first five trading days were down more than 1.7 percent. Three of these (2000, 2001, 2008) turned out to be very poor years with double digit losses averaging slightly over 20 percent, and the fourth case ended up being a positive year, but with a return of only 3 percent.

In summary, no calendar-based indicators should be relied upon in isolation, and a proper asset allocation plan should always be adhered to. But it may be worth watching the first five days of January as an indicator to not be too negative or too positive in our view. The potential good news for 2013 – the S&P 500 Index returned 2.1 percent in the first five trading days of this year. Let’s hope the five-day January barometer indicator holds true this time around!

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.

 


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