Zacks Link is an interactive, menu-driven application that enables users to access any information in Zacks databases seamlessly from within Microsoft Excel - via the Internet.

Zacks Link enables you to create sophisticated custom analytical models using the Excel-style formulas in the reports. Data used for the report generation can be retrieved form a variety of sources: Zacks standard databases, your custom Zacks database, or it can be imported from other spreadsheets or data files.

Screen is a powerful tool for examining the fundamental characteristics of your current holdings or searching for potential valuable additions to your portfolio. With Screen you can perform interactive screening to analyze market distribution and find companies that can serve as potential candidates for investments.

Screen also allows you to explore the Zacks historical and current market databases of over 8,000 stocks using over 1000 predefined items or an unlimited number of your own custom calculations.

The Trading Strategy Evaluator is the final step in the backtesting process. It allows you to test your models' trading characteristics.

With the Trading Strategy Evaluator you can access your model's economic viability when subjected to real-world trading costs and limitations; perform sensitivity analysis to show how your model stands up to incensed commissions, slippage, and other costs; test the effects of timing strategies and cash positions on your equity selection model, compare the stocks selected by you model to the performance of the stocks you actually held during the test period.

Portfolio Analytics is designed to provide detail and summary information about the user's portfolios and compare that information to the benchmark over a specified time period. This helps explain how the portfolio is different or similar to benchmarks and other portfolios.

A basic tenant of Investment theory is that since a company's current value is equal to the discounted value of its future earnings, changes in a company's expected future earnings should directly translate into changes in the company's stock price. In 1982 Zacks developed a model ( the Zacks Indicator ) that predicted future revisions of brokerage analyst EPS estimates using historical patterns in the brokerage analyst EPS estimates. This was the first "Estimate Revision" model. Over the years since 1982 the Zacks Indicator model has been reformulated a number of times and has proven itself to be perhaps the most effective technique available to professional investors for predicting price changes over a 3 to 6 month horizon.

During the last 23 years, the portfolio consisting of the top 5% of the companies selected by the Zacks Indicator delivered an Annualized Return of 35%, compared to 15.9% return for the S&P 500, 13.6% return for the equal weighted universe and 3% return for the portfolio of the bottom 5%. These returns are not the result of backtests but are the returns Zacks clients could have achieved (excluding transaction costs) had they followed the recommendations of the Zacks Indicator as it was delivered to them by Zacks weekly since 1982. These returns have been confirmed and audited by an independent CPA firm whose report is available on request.

Zacks extensive data sets give you access to over 20 years of data history on over 16,000 active and inactive US and Canadian equities. Zacks data is accessible through our backtesting and production models, in addition to being available independently through raw data feeds as both history files and updates.

We believe that the value of equity research is measured by the performance achieved by its users, and consequently we focus the efforts of our analysts and our models on identifying stocks that will outperform and under perform their industries. We operate the 3rd largest research department among Independent Research Providers, covering a universe of over 1,150 US and Canadian traded companies and ADRs. Zacks independent equity research integrates Zacks quantitative models with the judgments of our staff of 30 senior analysts and 20 junior analysts who are organized by industry and are responsible for making recommendations, EPS estimates, and setting target prices for their followed companies. In addition to Company Research reports, our Research product includes our monthly Economic Outlook, our monthly Market Strategy Overview, and our bi-weekly Model Portfolio. We also provide the Zacks Quantitative Snapshot Report for an additional universe of 2,500 companies, resulting in total research coverage of 3,650 companies.

Zacks Research Delivery is the exciting new alternative to First Call. Using state of the art internet technology Zacks is able to provide buy side firms with timely access to daily notes, full text brokerage research reports, and analyst models from all US brokerage firms producing institutional quality research.

Reports - in-depth, insightful summaries and comparisons of the sell side bull and the bear stories for a company - summarizes the key fundamental reasons presented by sell side analysts for revenue growth, changes in margins and growth in EPS -- including abstracts of each individual sell side analyst's valuation comments.

Earnings Models - Comparative Sell Side Spreadsheets - a single spreadsheet that includes and compares the individual sell side analyst income statement models - plus, for the first time ever, the full consensus income statement - plus comparisons of valuations, non-financial metrics and forecast revisions.