Mr. King: Telecom services. So I cover the Bells. I cover a lot of fixed line companies, the RLECs as well as some wireless services companies. I also have a little bit of a niche on the emerging market wireless side of things as well, all from a services standpoint. I would say that generally speaking, with respect to the U.S. names, it is largely viewed by investors as a relatively defensive industry. So if anything, the stocks, particularly the Bells and the RLECs, tend to do their best when investors believe the world is falling apart. So really one of the few times that we've seen significant outperformance from the group on a quarterly basis for the last several years has been fourth quarter of 2008, when everyone thought the world was coming to an end. Telecoms generally outperformed there. But having said that, from a U.S. standpoint, it is certainly becoming much more of a mature industry every single day. Broadband and wireless are both fairly saturated at this point from a total penetration perspective, and growth overall has been slowing. I think if the economy does begin to improve, you'll begin to see some improvements particularly in the small and medium businesses in the enterprise sectors. The companies that I cover do have some fairly significant operating and financial leverage to those subsectors, so to speak, so that will certainly help matters. But those are subsectors that are generally more tied to employment levels. So you not only need to have a return to growth throughout the economy, but you really need to have a return to some meaningful strength from a job standpoint, and that's certainly not something that we've seen yet.
TWST: Are there any companies you cover that have weathered the economic storm better than others?
Mr. King: If you look back over the last three or four years or so, certainly during times of severe market stress, the Bells and the RLECs have performed a little bit better, certainly with most. But having said that, in telecom over the last three years, telecom services has been the single worst-performing S&P sector out there.
Tickers included in this excerpt: AMX, CLWR, CMCSA, CTL, FTR, MICC, NIHD, Q, S, T, TWC, VZ, WIN
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