Raymond James is top broker

ST. PETERSBURG — Raymond James Financial Inc. (symbol: RJF) was named the best full-service broker in the nation in the 2011 Annual Broker Survey by SmartMoney.

A large part of Raymond James' dominance was based on the assembly of its stock portfolio offering: The St. Petersburg-based firm was one of just two brokerages whose model portfolios beat the S&P 500 stock index for a full year, SmartMoney says.

The survey used data from Zacks Investment Research, J.D. Power and Associates, Corporate Insight, DALBAR, and Forrester Research, along with SmartMoney's own proprietary information, to establish its results. Raymond James beat out brokerages like Edward Jones, Wells Fargo and UBS to claim the top spot.

Raymond James Financial Inc. earned $2.9 billion in revenues in its 2010 fiscal year. Recently, Raymond James announced that it would begin offering mortgage-lending services to clients outside of its advisory services customer base.