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More trouble at M* web page. Wont do comparisons of two ETFs shows 2009 data for a fund that is 6 months old. Clearly individual investors are not just in the back seat we are in the trailer with a flat tire
@sma3 - Just out of curiosity are you a paid subscriber to M* services? I'm not but I experience all of the failings of their new site which may partially explain some of that. Still their revamped web site is an utter disaster.
Yes I have subscribed for over a decade. In addition to the above losses, the "purchase" tab on funds is missing. It was not always correct but it gave you a place to start.
The new web page is a disaster
If it were not for the portfolio aggregater and XRAY, I would be long gone
I was a subscriber for a few years after the financial crash and agree that the changes are lamentable. When looking for new funds to buy the 'Purchase' tab was so helpful viewing the different share classes and expenses etc.
Dryflower, is this what you are missing? Click on the 'Equity Prices' tab at left above the list of securities and you can see daily prices. Change the ticker to the fund you want in the address bar. It's the only way to do it.
Start with the URL below (it will give you the places to purchase DLTNX), and then either insert your ticker into the page's quote box, or replace the DLTNX in the URL with your ticker.
For a few funds, the quote box doesn't work, but rewriting the URL doesn't seem to fail.
@Simon Yes! that is exactly what I was missing. Thank you! What a useful link. So it's right there for Morningstar to offer its users, and yet the geniuses who set things up have made it invisible without a work-around.
Once I've followed your link, it also works if I put the new ticker in the "quote" box on the M* page.
I love the way when I use your link it says "Welcome null!"
Thanks, @msf! With the sad demise of Tom and Ray, the Tappet Brothers, it may be time to reprise one of their signatures. They always said the Ray Suarez of PBS "knows everything." I'm not sure about Mr. Suarez, but I am confident in anointing @msf as the MFO member who comes the closest to knowing everything we on the board can use. With the above link, I rediscovered the M* I used to know; it really was a Proustian experience in which the past came back in all its dimensions.
I was a paid M* user for years but quit 2 years ago given the neverending site woes, bad data, redesign, etc.
I've found much of the data points I need for stock or fund analysis are on SeekingAlpha, for free, and in a much more usable format. And of course, MFO Premium is a rock-solid resource, too!
@BenWP - thanks for the plaudit, but I really know only enough to be dangerous (especially with a search engine at my fingertips).
Morningstar has made such a mess of things that there are people posting links all over the web to its old pages. Take @Simon 's link above for portfolio holdings (another old M* page). Hit the "purchase" tab, and you'll get to the same place I gave. (I just stripped off the useless USA/English modifiers in the URL to shorten it.)
While the old style pages seem to be current, there's no telling how long Morningstar will keep them around. So enjoy the madeleines while you have them.
This sounds like a rhetorical question, but it's not. I would truly like to know:
How can the people running the Morningstar website be so stupid? They can read. They have had plenty of honest feedback from their users. What are they doing? They could easily fix it. What is going on?
"They know best." And they don't care how long it takes to fix things.
They're taking features from Premium and making them part of more expensive institutional packages, IIRC. And the site redesign is catering toward (allegedly) a younger crowd ... their badge-worthy forum, which I quit after many years this summer, certainly is - but not getting much traction.
This sounds like a rhetorical question, but it's not. I would truly like to know:
How can the people running the Morningstar website be so stupid? They can read. They have had plenty of honest feedback from their users. What are they doing? They could easily fix it. What is going on?
I and others have speculated that this is a result of M* shifting its business model to focus on software and data that targets the financial industry. That includes licensing its proprietary indexes. For all we know, its industry software may be truly best in class.
M* seems to look at its retail online services as a cash cow, by which I mean "a legacy product with a slowly declining market share." https://simplicable.com/new/cash-cow
The retail website isn't their core competency, which makes upgrading inefficient (if done in-house) or costly (if outsourced). Either way, they may have made a calculation that maintaining it is not worth their effort, even if over the long term they lose the entire retail business.
M* really started going downhill when they began managing money and had to revise some of their newsletters for SEC compliance, so much of the 'opinions' and 'recommendations' got nixed in favor of more generic 'analysis'. It only got worse from there.....
As a member of the class of '42, I dare say quite a few of us who bemoan the loss of M* as we knew it represent a diminishing market. Many of us on MFO are retirees or close to it; I doubt my kids and grandchildren will pay much attention to mutual funds.
As a member of the class of '42, I dare say quite a few of us who bemoan the loss of M* as we knew it represent a diminishing market. Many of us on MFO are retirees or close to it; I doubt my kids and grandchildren will pay much attention to mutual funds.
I still use the old M* ratings/risk pages, which are still updating. I'm seeing, though, a few changes in the way some of the up/down capture ratios are calculated. If you use those ratios, be sure to read the small print under the capture figures to see which categories/indexes they're using to calculate the ratios. In at least a few cases, they're no longer more or less equivalent to those used to calculate the other relative data.
We've gone from a culture of need ("demand it and it will appear") to a culture of change ("create it and they will adapt"). Does the second way of thinking lead to the greater creativity?
Comments
1. The loss of the feature whereby one could compare year by year results of 2 or more funds
2. The loss of the feature whereby one could click and see the day's results of the stocks held within a fund
I can't imagine why they would have eliminated these 2 useful features.
The new web page is a disaster
If it were not for the portfolio aggregater and XRAY, I would be long gone
Dryflower, is this what you are missing? Click on the 'Equity Prices' tab at left above the list of securities and you can see daily prices. Change the ticker to the fund you want in the address bar. It's the only way to do it.
http://portfolios.morningstar.com/fund/holdings?t=DODGX®ion=usa&culture=en-US
For a few funds, the quote box doesn't work, but rewriting the URL doesn't seem to fail.
http://financials.morningstar.com/fund/purchase-info.html?t=DLTNX
What a useful link. So it's right there for Morningstar to offer its users, and yet the geniuses who set things up have made it invisible without a work-around.
Once I've followed your link, it also works if I put the new ticker in the "quote" box on the M* page.
I love the way when I use your link it says "Welcome null!"
Good luck, null!
I was a paid M* user for years but quit 2 years ago given the neverending site woes, bad data, redesign, etc.
I've found much of the data points I need for stock or fund analysis are on SeekingAlpha, for free, and in a much more usable format. And of course, MFO Premium is a rock-solid resource, too!
Morningstar has made such a mess of things that there are people posting links all over the web to its old pages. Take @Simon 's link above for portfolio holdings (another old M* page). Hit the "purchase" tab, and you'll get to the same place I gave. (I just stripped off the useless USA/English modifiers in the URL to shorten it.)
While the old style pages seem to be current, there's no telling how long Morningstar will keep them around. So enjoy the madeleines while you have them.
How can the people running the Morningstar website be so stupid? They can read. They have had plenty of honest feedback from their users. What are they doing? They could easily fix it. What is going on?
"They know best." And they don't care how long it takes to fix things.
They're taking features from Premium and making them part of more expensive institutional packages, IIRC. And the site redesign is catering toward (allegedly) a younger crowd ... their badge-worthy forum, which I quit after many years this summer, certainly is - but not getting much traction.
M* seems to look at its retail online services as a cash cow, by which I mean "a legacy product with a slowly declining market share."
https://simplicable.com/new/cash-cow
See, e.g., Dead Man's Funds. "From 1988 until 1998 the fund did not acquire any new investors. But many current investors simply failed to sell, which enabled Steadman and his family to continue to milk the funds as a source of income for themselves. "
https://www.cognizantwealth.com/2016/06/16/the-worst-mutual-fund-in-history/?referrer=https://www.google.com/
The retail website isn't their core competency, which makes upgrading inefficient (if done in-house) or costly (if outsourced). Either way, they may have made a calculation that maintaining it is not worth their effort, even if over the long term they lose the entire retail business.
M* really started going downhill when they began managing money and had to revise some of their newsletters for SEC compliance, so much of the 'opinions' and 'recommendations' got nixed in favor of more generic 'analysis'. It only got worse from there.....
Cheers, AJ