Morningstar Information
By Scott McKenzie
The Morningstar website has plenty of FREE information for investors seeking managed funds for their portfolios. In this piece we introduce you to some of this very valuable information.
Home and Membership
Home is: http://www.morningstar.com.au/Home.
This page gives you access to:
- Top Stories – print and video – about funds and fund managers, news about the financial services industry generally, and other elated matters
- Some stories from Huntley’s Your Money Weekly (which is Premium content i.e. accessible only to those who have paid a subscription); well worth considering
- Funds information – click on FUNDS to take you to: http://www.morningstar.com.au/Funds
You will need to register to get far into this website, even the free materials. Do this by going to the Membership page at: http://www.morningstar.com.au/Membership and signing up for free membership.
Back to the Funds page: http://www.morningstar.com.au/Funds.
Funds information
One important part of this page is the section Funds Features. Some interesting pieces at present featured there include:
- When star fund managers walk – looking at what we do when the managers of our invested funds leave and go somewhere else.
- Our favourite Asian funds – the best of the best.
- High star rating, low recommendation – what it means.
This is well worth visiting from time to time.
Next we visit the Fund Screener – click on that name in the box to the left or on http://www.morningstar.com.au/Tools/FundScreener.
This is our way into detailed information about each of the thousands of managed funds available in Australia. Let’s check out a fund most of us know about: Platinum International Fund.
- Click on the arrow on the right of the Fund Manager (name) box, to reveal a long list of fund managers. Click on Platinum Asset Management.
- Then click on Investment Trusts in the box Legal Type. This is the category you’ll use almost all the time: Investment Trusts.
- We can ignore the next box: Category, as we know which fund we are looking for. We would use category if all fund managers offering (say) Australian Large Blend were being researched (and compared).
- And we can ignore all the rest of the boxes right down to the bottom to Show Result. Click on Show Result. This will bring up a page with seven Platinum funds including the Platinum International Fund.
Notice that this fund is a 5-star fund (highest) but that Morningstar withhold their recommendation for Premium subscribers. This is a World Large Value fund with over $8 billion invested.
- Next click on the Performance-Return button to reveal performance for 6 months, and 1/3/5/7 years.
- Next click on Category Ranking – this gives the International Fund’s ranking among other World Large Blend funds – normally 1 or 2 but not that high in the last year or so. (But note how well ranked the Platinum funds are overall).
- Next click on Fees & Expenses – shows the 1.54% ICR (indirect cost ratio).
- Next click on Prices & Distribution – tells when income distributions are made.
- (Almost) finally click on Operations – tells us the Minimum Investment amount ($20,000 for Platinum funds) and the Ticker Number – a Morningstar number that helps identify the fund.
- Finally click on Platinum International Fund. This is the way Premium subscribers get detailed reports about each fund.
You can repeat this sort of process to find out about other funds. For example if you want to find the best Australian Large Blend funds:
- Click on Revise Search to bring back the Fund Screener page.
- Fund Manager: any
- Legal Type: investment trust
- Category: Australian Large Blend
- Then scroll down towards the bottom and click on Morningstar rating 5-star.
- Show Result.
Two pages of funds (21 funds) result. Notice that they aren’t 21 different funds as some are repeated within platforms (IOOF, CFS FC).
We can now get information about each of these funds by repeating the earlier process looking at Performance & Returns etc.
Funds we like
Here are some funds well worth a look:
- Perpetual W Ethical SRI Fund (Australian Large Value)
Perpetual Investment Management
5-star
- UBS Australian Share Fund (Australian Large Blend)
UBS Global Asset Management
5-star
- BT W Microcap Opportunities Fund (Australian Mid-Small Blend)
BT Investment Management
5-star
- Platinum Asia (Equity Asia w/o Japan)
Platinum Asset Management
5-star
- K2 Select International Absolute Return Fund (World Large Blend)
K2 Asset Management
5-star