MEMPHIS, Tenn. (January 24, 2005) – The Focus List of Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc. posted the best returns among the recommended stock lists of 14 leading national and regional brokerage firms, including Bear Stearns, Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch and Raymond James for 2004. In "Winning Hands", an article published January 24, 2005 in Barron's, Morgan Keegan's Focus List posted a 27.8% return for the year ended December 31, 2004, outperforming the other brokerage firms surveyed by Zacks Investment Research and the Standard & Poor 500 Composite for the same period.
"Our Focus Group benefits from the raw material provided by Morgan Keegan's talented equity research analysts," said David Guthrie, chairman of Morgan Keegan's Focus Group and director of the firm's equity research. "Their in-depth knowledge of the industry sectors and companies they cover certainly gives us a competitive edge."
In 1988, Morgan Keegan created the Focus Group to make the firm's equity research more accessible for the individual investor. The Focus Group, which includes representatives from equity research, institutional sales, equity strategy and retail sales, reviews the firm's coverage universe of stocks and selects the ones they like best. To determine their list, the Focus Group selects only those stocks that demonstrate the potential for maximum investment return.
Zacks Investment Research Inc., an independent research source for Barron's, tracks the stock recommendations of 14 major brokerage firms in the monthly survey. The Zacks survey is intended to give investors an indication how their portfolio would perform if investment professionals selected their stocks. Calculations done for the survey take into account gains or losses, dividends and theoretical commissions of 1% on each trade. Beginning and end prices used are the official exchange closing prices on the date a focus list change is made. Zacks calculates the time-weighted monthly performance of focus lists on an equal-weighted basis. Monthly returns are then linked geometrically to produce quarterly and annual total return performance figures.
