The first quarter of 2009 saw continued turmoil and fallout from the bursting of the housing bubble.  The broad-based decline of virtually all equity markets around the world continues to present us with attractive buying opportunities.  We can give no assurances that businesses that we believe are bargains at current prices will not continue to be marked down even lower, but we expect returns from these levels in the businesses we own to be more than satisfactory over the long run.

We further worked to increase our long term expected returns by selling cheap businesses in order to buy cheaper businesses.  We believe your assets are invested in strong businesses whose competitive positions should improve as weaker companies fall by the wayside and struggle to compete with better brands, better execution, better balance sheets, etc. even if the strong businesses earn less in the short run.

The statements and opinions expressed in this section are those of the author. Any discussion of investments and investment strategies represents the Funds’ investments and portfolio managers’ views at that time, and are subject to change without notice.