Bridge Road is a long way from Wall Street, but they may as well intersect at Ben Zacks' house.
Zacks, 61, and brother Leonard, 63, both Kanawha City natives, founded a stock research service and investment firm, Zacks Investment Research, in 1977 in Chicago.
Three years ago, having recently fathered a daughter and needing a change of scenery, Zacks moved back to Charleston, to a house on Holly Road in South Hills. There, he carries on much as he did in Chicago, investing $2 billion in assets for clients.
“I never had one regret, not one,” since moving back to Charleston, says Ben Zacks, who runs a $2 billion investment portfolio from his South Hills home.
"I wanted a more peaceful, tranquil life," he said. "I needed to be away from distractions."
Far from complicating his job, the distance from the Chicago office has made it easier, Zacks says.
"I'm more focused than ever," he said. "Being removed from the financial centers really cuts down on the noise."
By several measures, the number of people working from home via Internet connections and other telecommuting technology is growing at a steady clip. The Gartner Dataquest telecommunications research firm, for instance, reported last year that about 12 million U.S. workers telecommute for more than 8 hours per week, compared with about 6 million in 2000. By 2009, Gartner estimates, the figure will rise to 14 million.
Financial companies like Zacks', however, haven't been relocating to West Virginia. The number of state jobs in the field held steady from 2006 to 2007 and is down nearly 6 percent from five years earlier, according to data from Workforce West Virginia.
But Zacks is a testament to what state politicians and business development boosters have long preached, often to little effect, about West Virginia: that even the most sophisticated, information-intensive labor can be moved here without sacrificing productivity.
As extensive as Zacks' information and technology needs are, he says, he has everything necessary to do his job in Charleston. That includes two personal computers, telephones and a Bloomberg terminal, a desktop computer with access to a subscription-only database of financial and regulatory data.
Information and research actually are the heart and soul of Zacks' company.
He and his brother Leonard founded it as a vehicle for capitalizing on a research epiphany that Leonard had not long after earning his doctorate in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The most revealing factor in gauging a given company's stock outlook, he found, is the revisions in earnings estimates that the company makes.
Bridge Road is a long way from Wall Street, but they may as well intersect at Ben Zacks' house.
Zacks, 61, and brother Leonard, 63, both Kanawha City natives, founded a stock research service and investment firm, Zacks Investment Research, in 1977 in Chicago.
Three years ago, having recently fathered a daughter and needing a change of scenery, Zacks moved back to Charleston, to a house on Holly Road in South Hills. There, he carries on much as he did in Chicago, investing $2 billion in assets for clients.
"I wanted a more peaceful, tranquil life," he said. "I needed to be away from distractions."
Far from complicating his job, the distance from the Chicago office has made it easier, Zacks says.
"I'm more focused than ever," he said. "Being removed from the financial centers really cuts down on the noise."
By several measures, the number of people working from home via Internet connections and other telecommuting technology is growing at a steady clip. The Gartner Dataquest telecommunications research firm, for instance, reported last year that about 12 million U.S. workers telecommute for more than 8 hours per week, compared with about 6 million in 2000. By 2009, Gartner estimates, the figure will rise to 14 million.
Financial companies like Zacks', however, haven't been relocating to West Virginia. The number of state jobs in the field held steady from 2006 to 2007 and is down nearly 6 percent from five years earlier, according to data from Workforce West Virginia.
But Zacks is a testament to what state politicians and business development boosters have long preached, often to little effect, about West Virginia: that even the most sophisticated, information-intensive labor can be moved here without sacrificing productivity.
As extensive as Zacks' information and technology needs are, he says, he has everything necessary to do his job in Charleston. That includes two personal computers, telephones and a Bloomberg terminal, a desktop computer with access to a subscription-only database of financial and regulatory data.
Information and research actually are the heart and soul of Zacks' company.
He and his brother Leonard founded it as a vehicle for capitalizing on a research epiphany that Leonard had not long after earning his doctorate in applied mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The most revealing factor in gauging a given company's stock outlook, he found, is the revisions in earnings estimates that the company makes.
Publicly traded companies typically announce their projected earnings long into the future. But periodically, as their business and industries change, they're forced to revise those projections. Leonard Zacks found a way to assess stocks' value potential on the basis of these revisions, devising a mathematical model to express the relation.
"Revisions are forward-looking, they're the only forward-looking factor," Ben Zacks said. All other financial information is already factored into the stock price, he said.
With Ben, a Boston University economics grad, the two built their stock-research business on the model, grading stocks according to their "Zacks Rank" and selling such information to Wall Street investors and analysts.
Today, Zacks Investment Research has about 500 employees and a team of 45 analysts. It's the country's second-biggest independent research company, meaning the second-biggest not affiliated with an investment bank or some other financial business.
Sixteen years ago, the Zacks brothers expanded into investing themselves, launching Zacks Investment Management, which manages assets for clients ranging from middle-class retirees to institutional investors according to the company's research insights. This is the end of the business that Ben Zacks focuses on.
Every morning by 5 or so, he logs on to pore over research, confer with analysts (many of whom are based in India) and execute stock trades. He loses no time to traffic or meetings, while gaining time for his 4-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, and wife, JoEllen, a lawyer and senior vice president at the Charleston Area Alliance.
"You could never put enough time into what I do," Zacks said. "The time you put into investment management is endless."
Few of his peers in the financial industry have taken a similar route.
"The majority still feel they need the interaction with other similar types, but I don't need that," Zacks said. "I don't need to go to meetings and dinner parties. My work isn't influenced by other people; I don't want to be swayed by their opinion."
Chances are, the analysts and investors he talks with during the day don't even realize he's so far out of the Chicago-New York loop, Zacks said. But when they do, he said, they seem to sense the grass might be greener out in the hinterland.
"More people are enamored and intrigued than wonder, how can you operate there?" he said.
To contact staff writer Joe Morris, use e-mail or call 348-5179.
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