Jon Michael
Management
[Starts abruptly] Joining me for today's call are Jon Michael, President and CEO of RLI Corp., Joe Dondanville, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, and Mike Stone, President And Chief Operating Officer of RLI Insurance Company. We will conduct this call as we have in past quarters. I will give a brief review of the financial highlights and discuss the investment portfolio. Mike Stone will talk about the quarter's operations, then we will open the call to questions and Jon Michael will finish up with some closing comments. Our second quarter operating earnings were $1.32 per share. Included in this quarter's earnings are $16.4 million in pretax favorable development and prior year's loss reserves. The favorable development came from our casualty book of business. The combined ratio for the second quarter was 79.5 resulting in underwriting income of roughly 25 million. Gross written premiums were down 3% versus the second quarter of 2008 and down 5% through the first six months of 2009. As we have demonstrated over time, we are an underwriting company focused on underwriting profits in hard and soft markets. We will grow when margins are acceptable and contract when we are not being compensated for the risks we are taking. Turning to the investment portfolio, as of June 30, our overall allocation was 78% in fixed income, 12% in equities, and 10% in short-term investments. This allocation has not significantly changed from the first quarter. While the fixed income and equity markets rallied in the second quarter, we still believe the economy is fragile and have opted to slowly reinvest our cash positions. In my opinion, the first quarter exhibited an excess of pessimism while the second quarter exhibited an excess of optimism. We still have concerns over economic growth, significant deficit spending, unemployment, and…