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	Surety Bonds are required for a reason, usually to protect public money. Many contractors and commercial businesses get frustrated by their bond requirements and will put the requirement to the side and put their full attention to what they feel needs it. Unfortunately for them, the obligee will feel quite differently about what is most important and what needs to be done. Some commercial businesses will begin operating prior to properly filing a bond. This can create stiff fines and other penalties. A Curves for Women Inc. in Shelbyville, KY failed to file their surety bond prior to selling memberships. The Curves had to hault all long-term memberships sales by state order. The suit asks the court to void all previous contracts sold without a bond, refund all funds collected, and fines of $2,000 for each membership sold. This is a prime example of a business operating without the state required bonding and paying a hefty price for it. When it comes to contractors, they will often want to obtain a bid bond anyway possible to get their foot in the door and worry about the performance bond (the one that guarantees the contract) at a later time. One thing that contractors must understand is what a bid bond actually does. A bid bond guarantees that if the contractor is awarded the job, the surety will provide the performance bond to guarantee the contract. If the surety refuses to write the performance bond the bid bond would cover the costs of the spread for the next lowest bidder. Therefore, for a surety to approve a contractor for a bid bond, they must also qualify for the performance bond. If a contractor decides to post cash for the bid because he/she can not obtain an approval for the bid bond, then their money is at risk. If the contractor can not obtain a performance bond, their posted cash will be used to cover the bid spread. It is not that it is impossible to obtain a performance bond in these cases, it is just that they may require substantial collateral. Regardless of what type of business you are in, a surety bond is not something anyone is happy about having to obtain. It may be an inconvienience of your time and assets, but the requirement is in place not to protect the principal, but the obligee. If you must obtain a commercial bond, be sure to do so or you will pay a far higher price down the road. Be careful if you are a contractor trying to get your foot in the door on a big job. Think it through and talk to a professional bond producer to discuss what options are available to you.

The November 12 issue of Barron's featured their "Outlook 2006" article. I always look forward to that issue because Barron's surveys a dozen or so of the top strategists on Wall Street to get their market predictions for the coming year.

Whatever these strategists think is what the brokers of their firms will likely be touting to the public. And since whatever the public is doing is usually the wrong thing to do, a better contrary indicator you will not find.

Here are some of my observations from the article...

• Of the 12 analysts surveyed, 10 think the S&P 500 index will be higher for 2006 than it is now. Bullish predictions ranged from a low of 1300 (Chip Dickson of Lehman Brothers) to a high of 1530 (Ed Keon of Prudential). A more typical bullish forecast was in the 1350-1400 range. The median forecast was for a gain of 9%.
• Only 2 of the 12 think the S&P will be lower -- Richard Bernstein of Merrill Lynch (a modest decline to 1225) and Abhijit Chakrabortti of J P Morgan (a bearish 1125). Mr. Chakrabortti was the only outright bear.

• They were asked to choose three of their favorite sectors for 2006. The most popular was health care, followed by technology and financials.

• Only 2 of the 12 listed energy. And none of them chose basic materials (which would include gold and silver mining and commodity stocks).

• They were asked to choose key themes for 2006. They were overwhelmingly partial to growth stocks over value stocks and large capitalization stocks over small capitalization stocks.

So if you want to go along with the crowd in 2006, you want to be bullish on the stock market. And your focus should be on large growth stocks in the health care, technology, and financial sectors.

But if you want to make money, you probably want to do something different. Like maybe invest in shares of small capitalization companies that are good businesses selling at bargain prices. And as far as sectors are concerned, Wall Street still seems to be ignoring the ongoing bullish prospects of energy and basic materials. That bodes well for those sectors.