Microsoft, General Electric and Exxon Mobil Rated Highest Among Analysts

General Motors Given Lowest Rating

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, March 21 -- General Electric, Microsoft and Exxon Mobil stocks are currently generating the most confidence among analysts. This is according to a poll held by research office Marketadvices.com. Staying away from General Motors, Merck & Co and Coca-Cola stocks is recommended for investors according to the poll.

Buy recommendations

Microsoft is at the top of the class according to analysts with a total of 30 buy recommendations. These recommendations are coming from organizations such as the Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Standard & Poor's. General Electric is coming in to a close second place with 27 buy recommendations. Not one organization dares to give a sell recommendation to General Electric. Exxon Mobil is also favored among analysts recently with recommendations from Prudential, Morgan Stanley and the Bank of America.

Sell recommendations

General Motors has once again been given a strong sell recommendation by many renowned organizations such as Pacific Continental, Citigroup and Standard & Poor's. Merck and Coca-Cola were also not popular among stock analysts and received sell recommendations from Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns.

International perspective

Allianz is still going strong on the DAX-index with 34 buy recommendations and only one sell recommendation. Analysts recommend Credit Agricole, Vinci and Vivendi Universal on the CAC 40. Favorites on the Dutch AEX-index are the ING Group, BAM and Philips.

All buy and sell recommendations of renowned national and foreign securities institutions can be viewed free of charge on the pan-European investment site www.marketadvices.com.

About MarketAdvices.com

MarketAdvices.com is a pan-European research office that collects buy and sell recommendations from renowned securities institutions and publicizes them free of charge on its website, www.marketadvices.com. These recommendations are made for a total of 340 stocks from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

MarketAdvices.com also provides information about the returns on recommendations issued by the analysts.

Overview of the stocks

    
    Stock                                   Number
                             Buy             Hold             Sell 
                        Recommendations Recommendations  Recommendations

    General Electric         27                4                0
    Microsoft                30                4                0
    Exxon Mobil              20                6                0
    General Motors            4                5               11
    Allianz                  34                4                1
    Credit Agricole          10                1                0
    Vinci                     9                1                0
    Vivendi Universal        19                6                0
    ING Group                39                4                1
    BAM                       9                1                0
    Philips                  33                8                1

(not for publication) For substantive questions, Ronald Kok, head of research at MarketAdvices.com., ronald.kok@marketadvices.com. For questions about MarketAdvices.com itself, please contact: Matthijs Kanis, matthijs.kanis@marketadvices.com. MarketAdvices.com Netherlands/Head office, Metropool, Weesperstraat 95, 1018 VN Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Tel: +31-(0)-20-330-95-41, Fax: +31-(0)-20-330-95-71, MarketAdvices.com Belgium, Koolkaai 11, 2000 Antwerp, Belgium, Tel: +32-(0)3-2260941