For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - June 29, 2009 - Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: AstraZeneca (AZN), Darden Restaurants, Inc. (DRI), Charles Schwab Corporation (SCHW), Stein Mart (SMRT) and Shire (SHPGY).

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Here are highlights from Friday's Analyst Blog:

AstraZeneca's Pipeline Must Deliver

We currently rate shares of AstraZeneca (AZN) a Hold with a $47 price target. The company is facing a number of challenges as it enters 2009, most notably generic competition to Toprol-XL, Nexium, Casodex and Pulmicort.

The just-announced increase

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The Retail Small Cap Spotlight will highlight small retailing stocks with upside potential that are flying under the radar of the analyst community.Today, we are looking at small cap retailer Stein Mart (SMRT). We think Stein Mart could be good way to play the consumer trading down, which we expect to last much longer than most market observers.Stein Mart operations combine the traditional department or specialty store with an off-priced business. We think this strategy to offer higher quality goods at lower prices is ideal for the current economic environment.Despite being well-positioned for off-priced retail sales, Stein Mart's results suffered along with more retailers. There were also fears of the company going out of business. As a result, SMRT shares collapsed to about $1 per share on March 2, 2009.Apparently, news of the company's demise was a bit ...