"We try hard not to have opinions about 'the market.' We buy bargains when and where we find them, but after a short period in 2002 and early 2003 when pervasive fear made lots of stocks cheap, we are having trouble finding great bargains again. Thus, when you look at the new stocks that we have added to the portfolios, the only unifying 'theme' is that they tend to be companies with good underlying business characteristics that have stumbled for some company- or industry-specific reason. It can be difficult to figure out how significant and how temporary the negative factor is -- this is art, not science."

"The deal answers the calls of members, investors and, indirectly, regulators, who have demanded that the New York exchange - the last major one in the world to have floor-based trading - become faster and more electronic, more diversified and public ... the floor-based system of humans searching for buyers and sellers, rather than having a machine anonymously match the parties, was riddled with conflicts, errors and corruption."