As I said, we have been significantly surprised by the magnitude of the impact of the economic slowdown on the stocks we held. We did not foresee that sort of earnings volatility, and we're forced to acknowledge that there's more economic sensitivity in some of our stocks than we anticipated, based on the minor slowdown in 1998. Many technology companies went through that one pretty comfortably, but this one has taken no prisoners. We're still focused on determining future cash flows. For most of the past several years, we had to dramatically raise our estimates of cash flows because the economy and company results were much stronger than anticipated.
Stock prices represent the present value of future cash flows.
Our research leads us to companies that we believe can grow cash flow faster than the rate embedded in the stock price. Yes, the growth rates have come down. But the market's expectations for growth rates have come down much more dramatically than is warranted. The 64,000-dollar question is whether, after you factor out the current slowdown, the secular growth rates three, five, and seven years out are noticeably lower than previously. Therein lies the difference between the market's view and our view.