Investors & Friends:

Here's a summary of our investment actions from the past week.

Option Strategies - Naked Puts

1) Cisco Systems Inc (Nasdaq: CSCO) - Our April puts, that we sold, expired.

The date we opened the trade was 1/29/10.

Click here for the Investrio Stock Selector Fund Bull and Bear Market Indicators Report for the week ending April 16, 2010.

Click here for the Investrio Stock Selector Fund Watchlist.

Upcoming earnings calendar for our portfolio holdings

4/20 - Infinera Corp (Nasdaq: INFN)

4/21 - Qualcomm Inc (Nasdaq: QCOM)

4/22 - Blackstone Group LP (NYSE: BX)

Click here for upcoming IPOs.

Lead Fund Manager
Investrio

Etcetera

1) On the topic of regulating banks.. "Exertions of the natural liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical. The obligation of building party walls, in order to prevent the communication of fire, is a violation of natural liberty exactly of the same kind with the regulations of the banking trade which are here proposed."
-- Adam Smith, father of free-market thinking

2) Key points from the Independence Fund April 7 letter to shareholders...

Click here for April 7 letter to shareholders.

Key points…
• In 2010, many who sat on the sidelines in 2009 are now flooding back into the market, scared that they're missing the next great bull market.
• In the past two decades, globalization and automation have forced private businesses to become fiercely competitive. The result is that private-sector wages have barely budged over the past 10 years. In a recent interview, economist Gary Schilling noted that the average public employee's wages are now higher than those in private industry, but that the public-sector employee's benefits package -- including early retirement, pension and gold-standard health care -- is 70% more valuable than those of their private sector peers'.
• There are really only two paths from here -- either some really hard choices will have to be made to balance the U.S. budget deficit (federal, state, and local), or we can go the way of Greece, where our obligations ultimately overwhelm our ability to finance them. The first option sounds pretty awesome, but a decrease in government spending (or further increases in taxes) will be a harsh drag on GDP. Things will become worse even as our structural condition will improve.
• One additional impact of higher capital-gains taxes is that they'll make dividends less valuable and therefore negatively affect the market's assessment of the companies that pay them.