Q:  Would you give us a brief overview of the fund family? A : Westcore Funds is a family of no-load funds managed by Denver Investments, which has over 50 years of investment experience. The analysts at Denver Investments have 18 years of research experience, which helps them to incorporate that practice in the management of various funds including the Select Fund, launched about 10 years ago. Q:  What is the investment philosophy of the Westcore Select Fund? A : The investment philosophy of the fund is to garner sustainable earnings growth by investing in attractively-valued mid-cap companies with enduring competitive advantages and potential for positive earnings revisions. Q:  How do you strategize to attain this goal? A : We use our fundamental research to understand the drivers of growth and profitability and to assess the earnings quality. We then employ a bottom-up and team-based research process to select stocks in the portfolio. Q:  Can you describe your research process? A : We believe that stock prices reflect the expectations for earnings and cash flow. As a corollary to that we must have the cutting edge to anticipate changes in those expectations to be able to outperform the market. That is why fundamental independent research is very important to have that cutting edge. We seek information from diverse sources like publications, earnings calls, meetings with management and talking to competition to understand as much as we can about an investment in order to evaluate the factors that will determine its success. We have a set of seventeen quantitative screens that we employ at the front end to form the selection pool of stocks for our fundamental research. These screens have been developed in-house and are tailored to individual industries. These screens are built in such a way as to have 35% emphasis on earnings quality, 25% on valuation and 40% on growth characteristics. When we screen all the historical data, we provide ourselves with a very attractive set of companies with which to start. Q:  What is the market cap range that you consider investable? A : The cap range we consider is from $200 million to $15 billion, covering the mid and smid cap range. This range covers the Russell 2500 Growth and Ruseell Mid Cap Growth Indices. Q:  How do you select the stocks for your portfolio? A : Our screening process reduces the universe to approximately 600 companies across all sectors We score individual companies within a sector against one another to arrive at the best in each sector and then we take up each one of those companies for further research. These would be companies that are taking market share by virtue of their products or service, companies that are experiencing improved profitability and returns, and last but not least are attractively valued. Our team includes six senior analysts and two research analysts. They use our proprietary enterprise value model, where our forecasts are expressed and where we can see the level of embedded expectations from the market in the price for the security. For a stock to become our high conviction stock, it has to have true drivers of valuation through improved profitability driven by growing revenue, expanding margins or improved asset utilization.. It must also have identifiable catalysts over the next six to twelve months that will help it grow the valuation with a minimum of 20% upside. When a stock meets all these requirements and is attractively valued, it becomes part of our portfolio. Q:  Could you give us a few examples that highlight your research process? A : A good example would be Broadcom Corporation, a diversified maker of semiconductor chips for the communication industry. Our analyst conducted detailed due diligence and found the company to be attractive as compared to its peers. He determined that the company would successfully gain market share across a number of communication applications with a product that reduced the need for three chips down to one, thereby providing a more cost efficient solution. We purchased the stock in early 2008 when the stock was under pressure due to accelerated investment in new products and litigation expenses related to questions of management improprieties and intellectual property disputes. We were concerned about managements behavior; however, we felt that the long term viability of the company was intact. We sold the stock in the middle of 2009 as the stock achieved our price target. Another example is the biotech company, Human Genome Sciences. We have followed the company for a long time and believe the company to have outstanding scientific research capabilities. We were particularly interested in the company’s clinical research program for systemic Lupus. We waited until their phase-3 trials were successful before acquiring this stock. We believe that the potential sales for this drug are in excess of $3B. Q:  How many positions do you typically have in the fund? A : We hold about 20 to 30 stocks in the fund. At the time of purchase, each positions ranges between 2.5% to 5% and may grow up to 8% at the most. Q:  Does your sector weight follow the benchmark allocation? A : No, it does not. We allow for a tolerance of plus or minus 20% relative to the benchmark but the fund is almost always fully invested with cash positions of 10% at the maximum. Q:  What is your sell discipline? A : We have developed a screen that looks at those companies that will be potential underperformers in the next six months. The companies that fall within the bottom range are reviewed and typically sold. Stocks are mostly sold because they achieve our price target or do not perform according to our expectations. Q:  What is your portfolio turnover? A : Since the fund has stocks that are our highest conviction and have catalysts that are expected to act in the 6 to 12 month timeframe, we expect the turnover to be around 100% to 150% range. But the recent trailing three-year turnover is much higher, at around 200%, because of the unusual market scenario. As we all know, the last several years have seen significant changes, and we have adjusted our positions to the opportunities at the time. Q:  What are some of the risks associated with your portfolios and how do you control them? A : We do not try to manage market risk from the standpoint of timing the market. Instead, we manage risks that are very specific to the individual companies. The alpha that we derive in this fund is derived from the stock selection, hence we try to manage that individual risk by the rigorous research process that we have developed. At the portfolio level we mitigate some of that risk by limiting the initial purchase positions between 2.5% to 5%. We allow for plus or minus 20% with reference to sector allocations, which gives us great flexibility to express our convictions about particular stocks. However, we have maintained significant sector diversification over time which has helped to reduce risk. We have weekly meetings to look at the macro economic effects on the portfolio. We monitor our portfolio regularly through a third-party risk assessment model to track the exposures to certain macroeconomic variables, such as the price of oil, interest rate and its spread. Finally, we understand our companies very well and review events pertaining to each of the stocks in our portfolios.