Memphis, TN (June 3, 2004) – The Focus List of Morgan Keegan & Company, Inc. posted the best returns among the recommended list of stocks of 14 leading national and regional brokerage firms including Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Smith Barney and Raymond James for the twelve months ended March 31, 2004. In "How the Pros' Picks Are Doing", an article published May 19, 2004 on Fortune.com, Morgan Keegan’s Focus List posted a 88.72% return for the year ended March 31, 2004, outperforming the other brokerage firms surveyed by Zacks.com and the Standard & Poor 500 Composite (S&P 500) for the same period. For the month ended March 31, 2004, Morgan Keegan again finished ahead of the competition and the S&P 500 with an increase of 2.5%.
"Our Focus Group is fortunate to work with Morgan Keegan’s talented equity research analysts," explained David Guthrie, chairman of Morgan Keegan’s Focus Group. "Their in-depth knowledge of the industries 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 universe of over 200 stocks and selects the ones most appropriate for an individual's personal portfolio. To determine their list, the Focus Group endorses only those stocks that demonstratethe potential for maximum investment return.
Zacks Investment Research Inc., an independent research source for Fortune.com, 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.
