From Ryan's point of view, the pharmaceutical industry looks pretty good at the moment.

"Even the companies that we’re not very optimistic about, such as Bristol, have gotten to the point where they’re very cheap, have pretty high yields and can continue to pay the dividends," she said in March. "So we’re not really negative on anything."

In 2003 and 2004, large pharmaceutical companies should see their sales and profits speed up from last year, when they took a large hit from generic drug makers, Ryan said. She particularly likes Eli Lilly and Pfizer.

"The industry’s history has been to generate profits through the sale of value-added, unique drugs, so if you can identify those companies that have pipelines and will do that, then they’ll just continue to make money the old-fashioned way," Ryan told The Wall Street Transcript. "Right now the obvious candidate would be Eli Lilly, which trades at a 30 percent premium to the market because the market views Lilly as having a promising pipeline and, therefore, a great growth opportunity. The other one is those companies that are maybe changing the model to accommodate the realities of the current world. There I would point to Pfizer, which is becoming so big that any one drug, when and if it goes generic, will not completely derail the organization."

Deutsche Bank hired Ryan in September 1999 as senior analyst covering large-cap pharmaceutical companies. She has covered drug companies since 1982, including eight years at Bear Stearns for eight years, two years at Prudential Securities and seven years at Alex. Brown. Institutional Investor named her as a runner-up in its 2002 All-America Research rankings in the Pharmaceuticals/Major category.

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If the federal government does anything even remotely involved with health care, Loss probably knows about it. He advises more than 100 financial institutions about about legislative, regulatory and political issues that affect health care. He closely follows Congress, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Loss was a founder of Washington Analysis, and is an executive vice president there. Before Washington Analysis, his jobs included senior policy analyst for the Government Research Corporation, assistant counsel for the American Insurance Association and legislative assistant to Congressman Emilio Q. Daddario of Connecticut.

Loss has a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Connecticut, and a law degree from George Washington University.

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Not many investment companies can match the stock-picking record of Calamos.

Over the past decade, the Calamos funds have generally outdone their peers, according to Morningstar. The Calamos Growth Fund has a 10-year annual average return of 18.3 percent, more than 8 percentage points higher than the S&P 500 over the same period. And the Calamos Growth & Income Fund earned an average of 14 percent over the past decade, and 11.5 percent over the past 5 years -- both tops in its Morningstar category.

Fund research firm Lipper has Calamos Growth rated as the top fund in its category over the past three, five and 10 years. And stocks aren't even how Calamos started out -- the company began in 1977 as a convertible securities specialist and didn't start the growth fund until 1990.

What does Calamos like these days? Nick Calamos believes that business capital spending has finally started rising again. The growth fund has shares in network equipment makers such as Cisco Systems, Foundry Networks and Juniper Networks, as well as a couple of online commerce names, E-Bay and Amazon.com. Other purchases include Apollo Group and Boston Scientific, although the full list is much longer: Calamos Growth has more than 100 names in its portfolio, and as of March 31, had no more than 2.5 percent of assets in any one stock.

Although the growth fund's performance draws a lot of attention, the company's roots remain in convertibles, or bonds that can be exchanged for stock at maturity. Calamos likes to describe convertibles as investments that combine bonds' fixed-income appeal and equities' potential for capital growth. In fact, the Calamos Growth & Income Fund originally had "convertible" as part of the title.

Nick Calamos has a bachelor's degree in economics from Southern Illinois University and a masters in finance from Northern Illinois University.

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