This Web site is the result of an ambitious information-gathering initiative launched in mid-2005 by Legg Mason, a leading provider of separately managed accounts in the U.S.* As the SMA industry continues to mature, Legg Mason's goal was to assemble a comprehensive assessment of this investment vehicle as it is used today; gathering insights into the attitudes and behaviors of SMA investors, measuring the current level of SMA awareness within the general public, and understanding which SMAs features investors value most.

To accomplish this task, Legg Mason enlisted Mathew Greenwald & Associates, Inc., a premier public opinion and market research firm that has conducted research for many leading corporations, trade associations and nonprofit organizations. The result was the 2005 SMA Investors Survey -- which, to our knowledge, is the most comprehensive, in-depth survey project ever undertaken on SMAs. Highlights of the survey are presented throughout this Web site.

Among the many revelations that emerged when the survey findings were assembled and analyzed, two were most significant:
1) Importantly, investors who own separately managed accounts are overwhelmingly satisfied with these investments, and they give their Financial Advisors high marks for clearly explaining their features and potential benefits.
2) Just as importantly, perhaps, was the discovery that many investors who have not invested in SMAs have not invested simply because they are unaware of SMAs, or because they do not understand them.

Hence, the development of this Web site and An Investor's Guide to Separately Managed Accounts.

Methodology: The 2005 SMA Investor Survey
The survey findings presented within this Web site represent the responses of roughly 250 investors of separately managed accounts, all with investable assets of $500,000 or more or total household income of $200,000 or more.

The margin of sampling error for this study is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. Subgroup responses within these populations will have larger margins of error, depending on the size of the group.

The margin of error explains that when projecting the data to the total population, the research will be accurate 95% of the time within the range of those percentage points. The sample size used is valid as a result of the statistical nature of the number of respondents in the study.