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Dear Mr. Berko:

Dear P.A.:

Congratulations on your retirement last year, but I can’t say congratulations on your Merrill Lynch investments. Frankly, I’ve never heard of ML&CO Proceeds (MLPRT-$9.31) or ML&CO Proceeds LKD (MLPRU-$9.13) or ML&CO Proceeds SER5 (MLPRZ-$8.99). I visited Value Line, Wiesenberger, Yahoo! Finance, Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, StockConsultant, QuantumOnLine, MSNMoney, called a friend at Goldman Sachs, another at Raymond James and another at Oppenheimer and struck out each time. I didn’t ring my contacts at Merrill Lynch, because I did not want to possibly compromise them.

So I called Merrill Lynch’s investor relations department. It took 12 minutes to negotiate the press-1 through press-88 system. After identifying myself, I had a nice conversation with a very pleasant man. However, he was almost as ignorant about MLPRT, MLPRA and MLPRU as I was, although he gave me the previous day’s closing prices.

At age 68, you may have erred investing $170,000 in those three Merrill things. The Merrill investor relations man was unable to tell me the yield on those Merrill products. That person was unable to tell me the kinds of businesses in which those three things invest, and he was unable to provide me the price history of those three things.

I don’t understand why that information is so difficult to retrieve, but I can tell you that it was done on purpose. I’m disappointed that a Merrill broker would cause a 68-year-old retiree to invest in a thing that is not priced on any exchange and, when asked for a market value, can only give the previous day’s closing price. Odd, that! Yesterday’s bread is still edible, but yesterday’s prices are worthless.

If last year you paid par (the Merrill investors relations person told me that par was $10), for those three things, you’ve lost more than $14,000 in principal, according to the Merrill man who took my phone call. I don’t think that’s the kind of capital protection you had in mind.

Frankly, I don’t know what underlying assets constitute those three things. I certainly don’t care for investments that can’t be priced at today’s market or assets that are not traded on the Big Board, the American Stock Exchange or Nasdaq.

I don’t care for investments where one must call the sponsor (Merrill) for a value, but I guess there’s a very good reason for that. If the commission on those three things is 3.5 percent (as I suspect it is — the Merrill person could not tell me), then I feel that’s a rather high price to pay for an investment that has lost $14,000 in market value in such a short time.

Though Merrill is having some difficulties with regard to the subprime fiasco, I’m quite sure that MLPRU, MLPRZ and MLPRT do not own any subprime paper. If that had been the case, then those three things would be worth a heck of a lot less than $156,000.

My dad would often tell me, “Never give expert investment advice on securities about which you know absolutely nothing, because there’s a remote chance you might be wrong.” So I can’t give you a “buy or sell” recommendation, but I will tell you that never in a hundred, never in a thousand and never in a million years would I recommend an investment the business of which I don’t understand, the yield of which I cannot determine, the price of which is not current, the symbol of which does not have corresponding equity on any of the major exchanges and the acquisition cost of which is probably 3.5 percent plus an annual management fee.

I’m sure there’s a simple explanation, but I can’t find it.

Please address your financial questions to Malcolm Berko, P.O. Box 1416, Boca Raton, Fla. 33429 or e-mail him at malber@adelphia.net.© Copley News Service