Mr. Swanson: We have a pretty small research department and there are four of us, and we are writing research ideas for our sales force of about 200 brokers that are retail oriented, basically a lot of individual accounts, family trusts and that sort of thing. We don't do a lot of institutional business to speak of. And we don't do any research for investment banking purposes. So what we're trying to do is find ideas that we think would appeal not only to our brokers but then also to their clients. For instance, we're trying to expand some of our presence into following companies based primarily in California. So we're trying to establish a niche for ourselves, considering that we are L.A. based and it is easy for us to go out and at least meet with the local companies, and build a little bit more of a dialogue with the management teams. And many of these companies are recognizable to many of our clients, many of which live in the state of California. So we're pursuing that a bit, which was one of the reasons I took up Cheesecake Factory. I had followed it in a previous life, a few years ago when I was a small-cap mutual fund manager, and so I was fairly familiar with the company and the concepts. So I did some work and went out there, and came away impressed that they're managing the downturn as well as can be expected. And they're poised, I think, to bounce back pretty well and at some point maybe even resume expansion, which has for the time being actually been put on hold. So that's sort of the general backdrop of what we're trying to do here. And so that, by default, puts us mostly as generalists. But being generalists, all of us have certain areas that we've gravitated to, either because we've covered them in the past, or we just have a higher interest level or what have you. And so for me that has always been pretty much all of the consumer areas, from retail, restaurants to - I have followed staples companies in the past, Colgate (CL), and Coke (KO) and Pepsi (PEP), and all that stuff. So I have a general familiarity with all of those companies, and I try to write timely ideas for our brokers in primarily those areas. I follow a couple of financials; I follow a couple of tech stocks here and there but largely reside in the consumer area.
Tickers included in this excerpt: CAKE, CMG, ELY
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