Members and Affiliates: The President of the MTA, Jordan Kotick; the Vice President, John Kosar; and the Secretary, Barry Sine, resigned last month. Prior to resigning, Jordan Kotick proposed, and Charles Kirkpatrick seconded a motion that the nominees for office in the 2006-2007 year be installed in place immediately. The motion carried. As a result, the new officers are Phil Roth, President; Larry Berman, Vice President; Tim Snavely, Secretary, and Julia Bussie, Treasurer. Of course, the election will be held, and the results will be announced at our annual meeting. I realize that this turnover of officers is odd and unprecedented for the MTA, but the immediate turnover of responsibilities will maintain the continuity in managing our organization. Contrary to what some members may believe, I am not bringing a grand new agenda to the MTA. Many of our current initiatives are valuable and must be maintained. The CMT program has blossomed

Intro: Since hitting an all-time high in December, the Dow Jones Tobacco Index (DJUSTB) has fallen as much as 11% before rebounding during the final weeks of April. Despite this recent action, and the weakness that appears set to follow over the coming months, the tobacco stocks should not be overlooked. In fact, they are expected to continue to outperform the broad equity indexes over, at least, the next year. The Macro View and Case for Defensive Issues: There are two, interrelated, reasons why tobacco stocks should outperform the broad equity markets during the next 1-2 years. First, the Four Year, or Presidential, Cycle is at a point where stocks are expected to be weak. When stocks are weak, investors run for the shelter of defensive issues, specifically those paying high dividends, like the 4.5% current yield on Altria Group (MO is 99.7% correlated with DJUSTB). Second, Stovall’s sector rotation model postulates that

MTA PRESIDENT Philip J. Roth, a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) is currently the Chief Technical Market Analyst at Miller Tabak + Co. He is in his fortieth year as a Wall Street professional, having been the chief market technician at Morgan Stanley, Shearson Lehman, EF Hutton, and Loeb Rhodes. A former director of the New York Society of Security Analysts and past President and former director of the Market Technicians Association, he has been voted No. 1 in Charting and Technical Analysis in the Reuters survey. He is a frequent commentator in the printed and electronic media. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate School of Business at Fordham University, and has lectured at Baruch, Columbia, Cornell, Georgia Tech, Howard, Rutgers, Tulane, and the University of Richmond. MTA VICE PRESIDENT Biography currently not available. MTA TREASURER Ms. Bussie has been involved in the futures and financial markets since the early 1970’s. As a member