The Research Wizard operates on a proprietary Zacks database structure. Conceptually, Zacks database consists of a set of time-series items for a set of companies. Each time series has a calendar (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual) or fiscal (fiscal quarterly or fiscal annual) frequency, and is maintained for a fixed number of periods of that frequency. As an example, month-end closing prices (Item 6 in the Zacks Current Market databases, DBCM) have a calendar-monthly frequency and are maintained for 13 periods (13 months).
In addition to the dated frequencies, two non-periodic frequencies may be included in a database. An item may have an X frequency, whereby no date is associated with the data, or an E frequency where each data item has a specific non-periodic date associated with it.
One vitally important characteristic of a Zacks database is the END DATE. This date indicates a database update date. The dates associated with every element in an item's time series are determined by the database end Date and the item's frequency. For example, a fiscal quarterly EPS series will start with the last completed fiscal quarter before the End Date. Fiscal annual EPS data will start with the most recently completed company fiscal years as of the End Date.
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