Good morning. My name is Yaazi and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Stifel Financial second quarter earnings 2008 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. (Operator instructions) Thank you. Mr. Jim Zemlyak, Chief Financial Officer, you may begin your conference.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. This is Jim Zemlyak, CFO of Stifel Financial Corp. I would like to welcome everyone to our conference call today to discuss our second quarter 2008 fiscal results. Please note that this conference call is being recorded. If you’d like a copy of today's presentation you may download the slides from our website, www.stifel.com. Before we begin today's call, I would like to remind listeners that this presentation may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not statements of fact or guarantees of performance. They are subject to risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual future results to differ materially from those discussed in the statements. To supplement our financial statements presented in accordance with GAAP, we use certain non-GAAP measures of financial performance and liquidity. These non-GAAP measures should only be considered together with the company's GAAP results. And finally, for a discussion of risks and uncertainties in our business, please see the business factors affecting the company and the financial services industry in the company's Annual Report on Form 10-K and MD&A of results in the company's quarterly report on Form 10-Q. Let me begin the call by going over our second quarter business highlights. Net revenues of $209 million, down slightly from the prior year second quarter and the first quarter of 2008. We reported GAAP net income of $12.3 million, or $0.45 per diluted share, a 752% increase over the prior year second quarter and a 14% decrease from the first quarter of 2008. Core net income of $16.3 million, or $0.60 per diluted share, a 13% decrease from the prior year second quarter and a 11% decrease from the first quarter of 2008, again core is…

Thank you, Jim. What I’d like to talk about, first of all, as I’ve said, given the difficult market conditions, we are pleased to report what I think was a very strong quarter. The quarter would be characterized by balance, balance in our businesses as the investment banking, which was weak across the industry but was offset by strong Private Client business, actually record Private Client business, a very strong Fixed Income Capital Markets, and within Equity Capital Markets, our cash equities business or our slow business has been very strong and something that we are gratified that we are getting traction on our business model, our research driven business model. But this environment – certainly one of the things I want to talk about, maybe focus on this call is that this environment provides us the opportunity to continue to build our franchise. Unlike what many people are reading in the industry, which are the thousands and thousands of jobs that are being either eliminated or, according to today’s paper, being shipped abroad, we are adding people almost at a very fast pace. And so I have a slide here, which talks about recent growth and talk about why I think this adds significantly to our franchise and our shareholder value, but also as I cautioned in the press release, there were startup costs always associated when any time you – when you add people. And that can have a pressing impact on short-term results. But we are not running the firm for short-term results, we are running it for long-term value. If you look at this in our Private Client Group, we’ve hired 89 financial advisors. This is all since the 1st of 2008. We’ve opened 16 new offices, a lot of offices out west, but offices all…

(Operator instructions) Your first question comes from KBW. Your line is open. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: Hi guys, this is Joel Jeffrey.

Hi, Joel. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: Quick question. In your 10-Q, you talk about a transfer from the available for sale securities of about $10 million at the held for maturity. Can you give us a little color on that?

Sure. That is a position that we have in a bank TRUP [ph] CLO. And there have been a lot of discussions about the accounting for that. If you look, Joel, a lot of firms have moved that into held to maturity. We believe we are going to hold this thing for a while. You certainly – the market to sell these things is very difficult if there is a market at all. So we felt that we should move it into held to maturity at the bank and effectively take some of the volatility out of other comprehensive income. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: Okay. And then in terms of your auction-rate securities, how much exposure do your clients have to that?

It’s in total – it depends on how you classify auction-rate securities. There’s a whole bunch in terms of whether they are BVRNs [ph] or whatever. But let’s talk about our primary one that we look at the most of the closed end funds. And that would be about $260 million – $265 million the clients own. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: Okay.

Let me add one other thing to that. I think it’s important for people on the call to understand. There is a lot going on and people are reading about a lot of the developments in this area. One of the things that’s of note is – and we’re continuing to analyze is, of that $265 million, about more than half, maybe 60% to 65% of that total was transferred to our front through our recruiting efforts. So that’s some of these issues that people have to understand that how is this all going to get resolved. I mean, it’s securities that just transferred into us that we’re holding. So it will – it’s a complex situation. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: Okay. And then just finally at the Bank, it looks like the loan portfolio grew primarily in the residential and home equity lines. Is that part of your plan to sort of move this portfolio to a more residential-focused or was that just where the sort of best opportunities were?

I think that’s where – as we are marketing to our clientele and putting in a – what we are trying to have a combined collateral securities home equity, the home equity portfolio for our clients is where we see opportunity as hard as that is to believe today. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: In the home equity lines, were those people exercising existing lines or were these new lines that were initiated?

I’m not sure I have – I don’t know if I have the data for that, Joel. I’m sure it’s a little above. Joel Jeffrey – KBW: Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Yes.

(Operator instructions) I show no questions in queue.

Our questions keep getting less and less, so hopefully that’s good. Anyway, everyone, thank you. We look forward to – appreciate your interest in the company and look forward to talking to you after the third quarter. Take care. Bye.

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.