“The threat of war hangs over Susan Cerciello’s dining-room table, as 11 women of the Odd Lot Investment Club consider the club’s $45,000 stock portfolio and possible new purchases in an uncertain climate,” writes Karen Demato in today’s Wall Street Journal.

“Might foreigners opposed to U.S. intervention in Iraq boycott U.S. companies, such as current holding Coca-Cola Co.? Will a shaky economy and concern about war-related terrorism fears lead Americans to cut back further on travel, affecting seemingly attractive airline companies JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines?”

“As they raised such questions one evening last week, the club members, mostly professional women in their 50s and 60s, had few answers, of course. ‘With the tumble and now with the war, it is very hard to know what to do,’ says Vicki Albert, 66 years old, whose job involves expanding membership at senior-citizen centers in her area.”

“Club president Esther Drezner, 60, declares that ‘the market may very well go up when the war starts,’ but she frets that the war rally ‘may be a short-lived thing.’ “

“Stocks have certainly surged since that evening, including Monday’s 282.21-point advance in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. ‘It is nice to see the market go up,’ Mrs. Drezner, a special-education teacher, said after Monday’s rally. But she says she is still skeptical about the outlook for stocks, in part because she is worried about the expense of the war.”

” ‘There is going to be a lot of money spent and the U.S. is going to pay for most of it,’ she notes.”

“Like individual investors around the country, Mrs. Drezner and the other members of her Connecticut investment club are anxious about how the near-certainty of combat in Iraq will affect their finances. The looming conflict is unsettling, but it is only the latest worry, joining the stock-market slide that has dragged on for more than three years, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and a persistently sluggish economy that has seen company profits and employment shrink.”