The conference began with a welcome from former fund analyst Kunal Kapoor, who is now director of information products and client solutions. This year, as last, I found the intro somewhere between disingenous and creepy because it starts with the declaration that Morningstar is driven by it's desire to serve investors. Uhh, no. As a publicly traded entity, it has a fiduciary obligation to maximize return to its shareholders; if maximizing the firm's returns also benefits investors, so much the better. Regardless of where Morningstar started, that's where they are now: a multinational conglomerate behold to its shareholders and bolstered by a taste for acquisitions.
Three focuses for Morningstar's efforts currently: they're working to (1) provide advisors with deeper and broader research (they've rechristened their "mutual fund research team" as their "manager research team" because advisors care less about the package than what's in it), (2) to help advisors improve their operational efficiency and (3) to "help manage changing client dynamics." That latter point reflects a massive data aggregation effort, so that advisors will not only be able to analyze the assets that a client has given them but also all of the other assets the client has anywhere. Last year's promise of devoting additional resources of small and emerging managers is scarcely evident; this year's "emerging managers" panel focuses on the likes of Bernard Horn of Polaris Global Value (PGVFX) who has $300 million in assets and who has been running the fund since 1998. The implied judgment - "if you do stellar work for 15 or 16 years, you'll begin to reach the threshold of 'vaguely interesting' for us" - is not affirming. (To be fair, M* initiated analyst coverage when the fund was just seven years old but it's hard to reconcile the "emerging" label with the manager's tenure."
I'm sure that and Google Glass are both good things, but I'm comfortable with neither.
For what it's worth,
David
Comments
Skepticism is a healthy state-of-mind...
for engineers and authors.
Thanks for being there, again this year.
Move toward the light, David, just move toward the white light.
"Client solutions"
Manage "client dynamics"
Why do these phrases trigger tiny involuntary twitches, and have me feeling it is imperative I should immediately emit a primal scream and dash into the darkness?
@Charles No need to over-worry; sometimes they let the engineers and authors live.
$439---"like" wow. It wasn't so long ago (or was it?) that I recall a $100/yr rate. I had no idea. I dunno, for what you get--- would "deplorable" be too harsh? At some point, the little indignities stack up until .... change is required. [I just watched part of a Senate hearing today, where a rep from TD Ameritrade was compelled to admit that almost all retail investor trade orders were sent into a queue used by HF traders. How often? Most of the time, for quite some time. And how often was it more to TDA's financial benefit when they did it this way? Virtually every time, the rep answered. (sigh)]
"How much does Premium Membership cost?
We offer a Premium Membership Service for $23.95 per month, $199 per year, $339 for 2 years or $439 for 3 years. If you haven't already, you can preview Premium Membership with a free 2-week trial period."
http://www.morningstar.com/help/faq.html#Premium
BTW, David, I always find it interesting that people will pay big bucks to go to M* meetings to hear M* employees speak. How good is that deal for THEM? I used to attend the Ibbottson winter advisor meetings until M* bought them and filled program slots with M* analysts and speakers.
"The software is accessed via cloud, so nothing is on our own servers. Yes, that is the way of the world in our business."
Not to get too off-topic, but I'm starting to get tired of this already. I can't own something, I have to have a "subscription" now. I've noticed this with Adobe, Microsoft (Office) and now, apparently, M*.
Google Drive, DropBox are subscription based. Hard drives are ancient.
Hmm. Cars are leased. Homes rented. Ownership? Who's that for?
Related? Buy a new Makita, but you do not get the battery. That must be purchased separately. And, it must be a Makita battery.
Interesting. A world where ownership is just for corporations, governments, and the very wealthy. Used to be land-owners. Now IP owners? Service owners?
Enough fun.
No such thing as privacy. Someone, somewhere, will be able to switch off your interface with the world... "Sorry, your payment is overdue." "Sorry, your 'user profile' does not match our required parameters." "Sorry, your 'lifestyle' violates our corporate policies." "If you believe that this decision has been made in error, please use our appeal process, and good luck with that." The whole thing is beginning to look like a bad sci-fi novel.
I'm a plain middle-of-the-road "liberal" Democrat, not a libertarian or anarchist, and even from that perspective it's getting very, very scary out there. Big brother, big finance, big government, the whole thing.
I'm glad that I'm as old as I am... I really don't like what I see coming.
I've been offered a significant reduction the last two renewals. Call before expiration and tell them you're not going to renew because it's too expensive, and the rep will make a lower offer. The schtick seems very much routine to them.
And, of course, payments and the cloud:
http://newsroom.mastercard.com/2012/08/01/mobile-paypass-meets-cloud-in-google-wallet/
Again, sorry to go off topic, but the whole cloud thing is becoming upsetting. Done with rant.
Same with ads.
Look for a new washing machine on-line and instantly, ads on every site are suggesting washing machines.
Amazing.
Oh, I noticed that RealPlayer also requires subscription now.
So, a fear here is we will not be able to download music or movies or books or games...all will need to be played from the Cloud...iTunes, WindowsMedia, NetFlix, Audible, GameStop...only available on-line.
Wow. That is scary.
Games can now be downloaded via online services. When they go online only (and I think that's a when, not an if), Gamestop is game over. Why have the middle man?
In terms of only viewing online, Amazon too.
• check the Accept cookies from sites box.
• do not check the Accept third-party cookies box
• set Keep until: to ask me every time.
It's likely that you already have a long list of cookies with various settings, in your case probably mostly 'blocked'. Click on Exceptions to see that list. You can now do one of two things: if you know what cookies that you would like to permit, you can comb through that list and change the settings. That can be a real pain, though, so it might be easier to just eliminate all of those cookie settings and start all over.
If you do that, with the settings as given above your browser should now automatically reject all of the third-party cookies, which are the advertising, tracking and other junk stuff that you really don't want.
Now each time you go to a new site you will of course be assaulted with a flurry of new cookie requests. Here's a suggestion on how to handle those:
First, accept cookies only from those sites that you want to allow. These may be either Session Only or may have an expiration date, typically rather far in the future.
Second, you may visit sites that you want to take a look at, but not allow cookies if you can help it. The problem there is that many times some operational feature of a site will not function properly without those cookies. So here's a compromise that usually works-
• Allow at least one, typically the first one, for Session Only
* Deny all of the rest, especially any cookie that has an expiration date other than Session Only.
You will wind up with cookies on your browser, but hopefully only from sites that you have approved. If you frequently use your browser for checking bank balances, financial holdings, or other similar operations this is about the best compromise that I've been able to work out.
If you do inadvertently allow cookies that you want to delete, you can go back through the preferences to that list, and block them there.
Hope this helps a little.
OJ