The Philadelphia Inquirer
Monday, January 11, 1993

By Andrew Cassel, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

By day, he is the mild-mannered spokesman for the Vanguard Group, the  Valley Forge-based mutual fund company. Writing brochures, talking to  reporters, that sort of thing.

But by night, Brian Mattes is a shaman in the Global Village.

At home in his study, he hitches up his 486DX,33-megahertz computer to its 9600-baud-per-second modem, taps a few keys and – SHAZAM! – he’s in cyberspace, a wanderer on the electronic prairie.

Mattes subscribes to Prodigy Interactive Personal Service, a three-year-old network owned jointly by Sears, Roebuck & Co. and IBM Corp., that offers news, games, information and conversation to some 2 million Americans with telephone-linked home computers.

Most Prodigy members come and go anonymously, but Mattes is a network celebrity, a guru of sorts to a dedicated cadre of mutual-fund investors who pepper him daily with questions, comments, complaints and compliments about Vanguard’s products and policies.

 At least five nights a week, he holds forth on one of the more than 400  Prodigy “bulletin boards” – electronic forums where subscribers post written messages and read those left by others.

Some are merely inquisitive:

“Brian: Dumb question #5693. What is ‘hot’ money?,” asks Michael, from northwest Indiana.

“No such thing as a dumb question when it comes to investing,” Mattes  writes back a few hours later. ” ‘Hot money’ is defined as an investment that will be placed in an equity or bond fund only briefly, and moved . . .  at the first moment for virtually any reason.”

Others are more contentious, raising such issues as Vanguard’s $10 per fund IRA fee.

“WHEN is Vanguard going to eliminate that draconianly harsh annual fee structure that you guys have for IRA investors?” demands a Californian. “How can you justify that type of gouging?”

“You deserve an answer,” Mattes replied diplomatically. “And it will be at a tone and level that may be undeserved given the nature of your inquiry.”

Questions often touch off long and wide-ranging discussions of mutual-fund investing, in theory and practice, subjects that Mattes says interest him as  much in his off hours as they do on the job.

“I’m an addict,” he said last week, in a telephone interview. “Every time I log on, there’s somebody saying something about the industry.”

Investing is one of the hot corners of the electronic-communications world,  with more stock-and-bond buyers tracking their holdings over home computers.

Of the 90,000 notes that Prodigy users post on the network each night, a significant number come from armchair stock analysts looking to trade information and opinions, on anything from the course of interest rates to  arcane stock-picking strategies.

“A lot of people think this is a bunch of 16- to 20-year-olds playing with  their computers,” Mattes said. “It really isn’t; there are some very, very  smart people on the system.”

Mattes’ regulars from the bulletin board agree. “It’s really an incredible  resource,” said Joseph Szabo, a retired patent lawyer in Irvine, Calif., who  often joins in the discussions. “There’s this wealth of expertise that you  tap into.”

The regular group includes portfolio and pension fund managers as well as  the merely curious; dubious advice or misinformation will invariably draw  dozens of vigorous corrections.

William Donoghue, a Massachusetts-based newsletter writer who specializes  in money-market funds, found that out last month when he criticized some of  Vanguard’s funds on the bulletin board. An avalanche of notes – many from Mattes’ fans – took Donoghue to task for getting his facts wrong. “Bill made  a mistake, the kind of mistake experts shouldn’t make,” Mattes said. Donoghue admitted as much later.

Mattes wandered into his role unintentionally, after initially subscribing  to Prodigy to provide a learning tool for his 7-year-old daughter.

“I was just flipping through it and just stumbled across this mutual-fund  board,” he recalled. “It was a complete mess; there was lots of incorrect  information being given out . . . In short order, there was this following  that developed.”

It is now a running forum, with Mattes responding to half a dozen new  questions each night as well as continuing discussions that sometimes last  weeks.

Although he is not there on company time and gets no compensation from Vanguard, he behaves, and is treated, as his employer’s official  representative on the bulletin board. He does not provide investment advice,  but does explain and defend Vanguard policies as well as answer specific questions about the group’s 74 separate investment funds.

“He knows his stuff,” said Arthur Kimes, a Los Angeles computer  consultant and another regular in Mattes’ corner. “It’s a shame more fund  families don’t have representatives on there.”

Kimes credits the Prodigy board with helping him diversify his mutual-fund  investments along rational lines, to take advantage of changing markets. “I  feel that I’m making more money with less risk than I was before,” he said.  “The feedback on Prodigy helped me do it in a more effective manner,” he  said.

Szabo, on the other hand, said  the bulletin-board discussions led him to  jump on a fashionable investment at the wrong time. “People get very high on the fund du jour,” Szabo said. “I think I’d probably be richer if I hadn’t  looked at it.”

But Szabo still dials up the service every night, to compare notes and pick Mattes’ brain. “I have really the highest regard for him,” Szabo said.  “I’ve learned a lot. It’s like having someone with his office door open all the time.”