The LSE Directory / Fundamental data
Zacks Investment Research is a Chicago-based independent investment research firm founded in 1978 by Len Zacks, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from MIT. The firm was built around Zacks' research finding that revisions to Wall Street analysts' earnings-per-share estimates are a powerful predictor of near-term share-price movement, a thesis it turned into the Zacks Rank, a proprietary quantitative stock-rating model introduced in 1981. The company opened its research to individual investors in 1992 and launched its consumer website, zacks.com, in 1996; the site today sells tiered subscription products offering daily Zacks Rank updates, stock screeners, equity research reports and portfolio recommendations. Alongside that consumer subscription business, Zacks runs an institutional data licensing arm supplying standardized datasets, analyst consensus estimates and recommendations, as reported and standardized fundamentals, price history, corporate actions, institutional holdings and insider transaction data, covering roughly 8,500 North American public companies plus several hundred non-US ADRs. That data, drawn from more than 185 brokerage firms and upward of 3,200 contributing analysts, is distributed to academic and institutional users through channels such as Wharton's WRDS platform, where Zacks' primary dataset covers company records back to 1940 and is refreshed monthly. This earnings-revision-first, data-licensing model differentiates Zacks from editorially driven research peers such as Morningstar or Value Line, positioning it closer to a quantitative signal vendor that also sells a retail subscription product. The firm's asset management arm, Zacks Investment Management, was founded in 1992 by Ben Zacks as a separate, wholly owned registered investment adviser based at the same Chicago address (101 N Wacker Drive). As of March 31, 2025 it reported roughly $12.4 billion in discretionary regulatory assets under management across a range of quantitative equity strategies. Since 2021 that subsidiary has extended the parent's earnings-revision methodology into a lineup of six actively managed ETFs: the Zacks Earnings Consistent Portfolio (ZECP), the Small/Mid Cap Core Portfolio (SMIZ), the Focus Growth ETF (GROZ), the Quality International Portfolio (QUIZ), and, most recently, two income funds. In June 2026, Zacks Investment Management, led by CEO Mitch Zacks, launched its first two income-focused ETFs, the Zacks Income ETF (NYSE Arca: ZINC) and the Zacks Preferred Income ETF (NYSE Arca: PRIZ), both targeting an 8 percent annual distribution yield built from dividend and interest income, preferred-security exposure and, where needed, a managed distribution policy that can include return of capital.
