How hot are "safe" US government bonds? They were up around 4% in August, after a big run in July amidst the market chaos. In fact, long-term government bonds, the kind the government recently decided they didn't need to issue anymore, are up over 12% this year so far. That's a lot of money to make in a safe investment.

We feel the current yield on beaten down utilities stocks of just under 5% is too tempting to pass up. Since money market funds yield less than 2% across the board, often closer to 1%, this should benefit the portfolios over the long term.

Tabloid news headlines aside, the real trouble - as it's been for some years now - is valuations. Stocks were priced for perfection when anything but became the market environment. More troubling, stocks were richly valued assuming the numbers (earnings and revenues) were "on the level", which, sadly, they were not.

Our other value stock pick besides the strong fund is the American Century Equity Income fund. We liked this fund a heck of a lot more a year ago, before it was flooded with new investor assets, but the fund still has some room to grow before it really begins to suffer. We're watching two things right now: asset levels and performance. If this fund breaks about $1.3 billion or so, or if we start seeing a slide in performance, we'll move into one of our backup choices.