In This Issue:

•Another Hard Act to Follow Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may have started off on the wrong foot, but he appears to have learned the lessons of those who went before him.
•STARS Status: Changes in S&P analysts' STARS rankings for June 19 through June 23.
• Tweaking the Foreign Allocation: S&P continues to advise a 20% allocation to foreign equities, but we are shifting the allocation to different regions to capture what we consider the potential of budding capital market trends.
•Nuclear Energy Is Back on the Drawing Board: Utilities continue to search for low-cost ways to produce electricity.
•Favored Low-Risk Financial Services Stocks: S&P is bullish on the financial services sector and thinks investors would do well to consider companies with low Qualitative Risk Assessments.
•Master List Stocks Update: Our three supervised Master List groups of stocks, recommended as core holdings for long-term investors, are regularly featured on these two pages. The High-Quality Capital Appreciation Portfolio, highlighted this week, consists mainly of large-cap stocks.
•S&P's Platinum Portfolio: This portfolio offers the best of both worlds: S&P's STARS ranking system, based on fundamental analysis, and Fair Value, S&P's proprietary quantitative model.

Some of the Companies Featured:
Bill Barrett
Carpenter Technology
Centex
Cit Group
Devon Energy
HomeBanc
Nice-Systems
Orthologic
Pepsico
Sharper Image
Sigma-Aldrich
Sunset Financial Resources
Suntrust Banks
Telecom Argentina
Walgreen Co.

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