At AGE some old brokers I knew used to refer to the "focus list" as the "f**k us" list.

[quote=no idea]

At AGE some old brokers I knew used to refer to the “focus list” as the “f**k us” list.

Very appropriate name for any firm's focus list.

Goldman Sachs' ones used to be by far the most lucrative to short.

When I was with Dean Witter, the "Focus List" was shown to institutional clients prior to being distributed to retail brokers. At that time (early '90's), DW's "Focus List" had a good track record.

As for the "internet craze", I nor my clients ever bought in to it. Which is why I was never near being one of the top brokers at DW. Not that I'm a genius, but everything about the pricing of internet stocks did not make sense. "New Economy"? "It's different this time"? PE's of 100? 200? 300? I didn't buy it. (Of course, it took about 5-7 years, before I could be smug about being right.) 

I also didn't sell the new DW mutual fund based on the Mexican peso (just before the peso crashed) nor did I sell leveraged bond funds (just before rates went up in the mid-'90's). Hmmmm, maybe I am a genius!

This is why I like our Research Center at MS.  We can pull five reports from five different sources and form our own opinion.

A good broker (seasoned with some common sense) knows how the focus list game works and avoids it like the plague. The ones (almost all shops) who got schmoozed and wound up with NASD arb complaints are/were mostly rookies.

I was a tech bull in 1998 and 1999 not because I believed in tech but because of "don't fight the tape." What persuaded me that the party was over or close to over was a speech I heard at an institutional money managers' confie by Arthur Levitt (former SEC Chairman) in March of 2000. He was warning about the tech bubble. That warning sunk in because I never heard or saw an SEC guy with that much "concern" before.

This is why I like our Research Center at MS.  We can pull five reports from five different sources and form our own opinion."

Can you elaborate on that? You are able to pull research from different insitutions? Like S&P, ValueLine,etc? That is one thing I dont like at ML. They have great insight and research, but I wish we had access to other firms viewpoints, just to get other opinions....

[quote=blarmston]

This is why I like our Research Center at MS.  We can pull five reports from five different sources and form our own opinion."

Can you elaborate on that? You are able to pull research from different insitutions? Like S&P, ValueLine,etc? That is one thing I dont like at ML. They have great insight and research, but I wish we had access to other firms viewpoints, just to get other opinions....

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Are you sure you can't? I thought everyone provided this as a result of the golbal research settlement. Anyway, it's 12 outside firms and it's available to clients as well as FAs.

[quote=mikebutler222][quote=blarmston]

This is why I like our Research Center at MS.  We can pull five reports from five different sources and form our own opinion."

Can you elaborate on that? You are able to pull research from different insitutions? Like S&P, ValueLine,etc? That is one thing I dont like at ML. They have great insight and research, but I wish we had access to other firms viewpoints, just to get other opinions....

[/quote]

Are you sure you can't? I thought everyone provided this as a result of the golbal research settlement. Anyway, it's 12 outside firms and it's available to clients as well as FAs.

[/quote]

That's all acurate.  FA's have it on their workstation and Clients can get access to it via ClientServ.  Basically you put in the symbol and it gives you the most recent reports as well as a synapsis of that what each analyst currently says, Buy, Sell, Hold, & Price target.

Some of the companies are MS, S&P, Morningstar, & Argus.  Not all of the 12 companies cover all the stocks, but you can easily get 5 opinions or more most of the time.

you’re right. Let me clarify. We can access Morningstar and some independent research shops- all decent research. I was referring to the abiltity to pull outside firms research. I tend to focus on “big picture” economic research, and I think it would be useful to have access to MS, UBS, and CITI research to get a better idea of what other CIO and Chief Economists are saying…