‘Bunk and pay fine won’t hold good now

Rules say if students have even 0.1% less than actual cut-off — 75% — they are not eligible to appear for the final exam. And, college principals can’t penalise the students.

The fund is down almost 10 percent after 10 years.Suddenly investors rediscovered their taste for plain vanilla — equity income funds whose stocks pay dividends or interest.”When the bear market struck and people lost a lot of money, there was more interest in preserving capital than there had been,” said Gregg Wolpher, a senior analyst at Morningstar.”There has been a revival of interest in dividends also, for that reason,” he said.American Century’s Davidson believes his focus on companies with strong competitive positions, strong balance sheets and strong cash flows will lead to better performance. Fidelity’s Select Automotive Portfolio FSAVX.O, for example, jumped 81.4 percent in the second quarter, the best performance of any U.S. Yet the investment style could come back in favor — mutual fund watcher Morningstar Inc (MORN.O) doesn’t even track equity income funds — as investors seek to preserve capital and find that investing for the long term can pay off.The allure of giant gains blinds many investors to what the steady building of income can do. Davidson’s is the largest, with $4.84 billion.Their record is remarkable, analysts say, because the stocks they own come in large part from the same universe as the S&P 500, whose return they have more than doubled over the past decade.DIVIDENDS ARE BACK IN STYLETo be sure, dividend growth has slowed and could damp performance. stocks.Davidson is one of a trio of equity income managers whose adroit selection of the stocks of solid businesses and eye on building income helped them outperform a number of star money managers who paid dearly for taking big risks during the bear market.The performance of Davidson, Todd Ahlsten at Parnassus Investments and Wasatch Fund’s Ralph Shive demonstrates that active managers can handily beat indexes and avoid the blow-ups that pulled down the overall market and many other managers.Davidson is a solid bottoms-up value investor while Ahlsten and Shive are steeped in value, but can lean toward growth companies All three oversee funds with more than $1 billion in assets.

The American Century Equity Income Fund TWEIX.O he manages lost 20.5 percent in 2008 — the best return that year of similar funds tracked by Lipper Inc, a unit of Thomson Reuters.Its slide, while steep, was almost half the 38.5 percent drop for 2008 in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index .SPX, a widely followed benchmark for investing in large-cap U.S. stock market again went topsy-turvy after the housing bubble burst and asset values plunged in 2008, but this time Davidson’s skills paid off in spades. John Tilak in Bangalore; Editing byUnnikrishnan Nair) Stocks. Popular years ago, the funds fell from grace during the tech boom when celebrating the joys of a 3 percent dividend paled against technology stocks’ gains of 200 percent — or more.OUTPERFORMING THE S&P 500The U.S. Excluding items, Atheros posted a profit of $12.3 million,or 20 cents a share, beating analysts’ consensus estimates by 6cents Revenue fell 8 percent to $112.2 million Analysts were looking for $103.7 million. Shares of Atheros were up 11 percent at $24.90 in tradingafter the bell They closed at $22.52 Tuesday on Nasdaq (Reporting by S.

For the quarter ended June 30, the company reported a netloss of $250,000, or break-even per share, compared with netincome of $10.1 million, or earnings of 16 cents per share, ayear earlier. Analysts were expecting earnings of 17 cents a share,excluding items, on revenue of $110.9 million, according toReuters Estimates. The company forecast third-quarter gross margins toincrease sequentially to 47.5 percent to 48 percent. “We have pretty good visibility going into the quarter,”Chief Financial Offer Jack Lazar said in a conference call withanalysts. Lazar forecast a third-quarter profit of 29 cents to 31cents, excluding items, on sequential revenue growth of 15percent to 20 percent, which would translate to $129 million to134.6 million. The company projected an acceleration ofrevenue from the consumer channel in the second half of theyear. In the quarter, the wireless networking chipmaker also sawstrength in netbooks and recorded growth at its consumerchannel, where its products are used in wireless handsets.

Atheros expects the growth in consumer to spill into the thirdquarter, when it said consumer would record the strongestsequential gains. * Q2 adj EPS $0.20 beats estimates by 6 cents Stocks * Q2 rev 112.2 mln vs est $103.7 mln * Q3 earnings, revenue forecasts beat estimates * Shares rise 11 percent July 21 (Reuters) – Atheros Communications Inc (ATHR.O)posted a second-quarter profit that beat market estimates dueto strong product cycles and market share gains, particularlyin the PC and retail router markets, and forecastbetter-than-expected earnings for the third quarter. (Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty; Editing by Vinu Pilakkott) Stocks Bonds. Shares of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania-based company weretrading up 8 percent at $5.10 after the bell. They have shed 71percent of their value since touching a 52-week high of $17last September. Collyn Gilbert of Stifel Nicolaus & Co said this was theprimary factor that led to the upside in the company.