Dart garners laurels for Fort Collins banker

Who’s that the Eye spied in a recent edition of The Wall Street Journal?

The familiar face, done in the familiar pen-and-ink style of The WSJ, belongs to David Jordan, who manages a high-profile mutual fund in the First Omaha Funds group from his base in the trust department of First National Bank in Fort Collins.

Jordan is among four contestants in the national newspaper’s “Investment Dartboard” competition, a semi-annual stock-picking contest that runs through September.

Jordan’s horse in this race is BMC Software Inc. (Nasdaq, BMCS), a Houston-based software company specializing in database management tools.

Going into the first turn, Jordan is running dead last. Out of the gate, in the March 9 edition of The WSJ, the pick was trading at $49.25. Last week, the stock had slipped under $42.

And the competition? Not exactly burning up the track, given the state of the markets lately, but at least in the black. Jordan’s nag has four more months to make up the ground.

Meanwhile his mug has been popping up all over, it seems. He’s a regular among the so-called “talking heads” on financial cable networks CNN/FN, CNBC and MSNBC, and is written up regularly in major newspapers.

The Sunday, May 14, New York Post, for example, carried a feature story on Jordan that focuses on his knack for keeping his fund ahead on the strength of low-priced growth stocks. Jordan’s fund, the First Omaha Growth fund, posted a three-month gain of 3.5 percent while the S&P 500 index lost nearly 1 percent, the newspaper noted.

So, the Eye wonders, how does someone in Fort Collins get this kind of attention?

Hiring a good PR agency helps.

“They were instrumental in making the introductions and getting us in front of the television media as well as the print media,” Jordan said last week.

He made his television debut in September, and has since been doing two to three segments monthly on the kinds of television networks that do for investors what ESPN does for sports junkies.

Sometimes the schedule is, well, grueling.

“The last CNBC interview I did was at a quarter to 7 a.m., New York time,” he said. “So I had to be at the Denver studio by about 4 a.m.”

Jordan, 44, has no plans to cut the distance to save some sleep. The Manitou Springs native has been in Fort Collins four years, and likes it.

“The investment professionals in this community are much less serious about themselves than they are in New York,” he said. “It’s much more comfortable.”

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