Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

In this Discussion

Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.

    Support MFO

  • Donate through PayPal

Morningstar Portfolio Manager: once AGAIN

edited March 2021 in Other Investing
Is anyone else running into this? I'm already signed in. (Premium.) The website shows me to be signed-in. ...
When I attempt to go to my portfolio, I am prompted to walk through the steps necessary to create a brand new portfolio. Another nick while sliding down the razor blade of Life. ...and now, it SEEMS to have fixed itself. Jayzuz.

Comments

  • edited March 2021
    I used Portfolio Manager today and did not experience any issues viewing my portfolio.
    Previously, I've been prompted to create a new portfolio on one or two occasions although I was signed in.
    This issue resolved itself shortly thereafter with no action required from M* or me.

    Note: I'm not a M* Premium member.
  • Thanks. I appreciate the response.
  • Make this a dead thread?
  • No problems. It’s a bit more reliable most days than an app I pay a small subscription fee for. The most frustrating thing with M* is that it fails to keep me signed in longer than a week, so need to log back in occasionally. It’s free. Who’s complaining?

    ISTM the M* tracker is a bit cumbersome to use - ancient technologically. But, on the other hand, it works. Newer and fancier isn’t always better. :)
  • I suggest that most system changes and upgrades take place on non-business days. Generally, personal portfolio sites I use, that require a log-in, place a message of an outage/upgrade several days ahead of the event. I've never had such an event at Fidelity; which I know are doing upgrades regularly, but likely into a redundant system that is merged after testing.
    @Crash. You seem to be a "crash test" person for M*. I've not encountered a problem with M* for the data I use; but I am not a member and do not log-in.
  • M*'s at it again. Instant X-ray and Portfolio Manager are failing to identify the style of many funds. I just tested a few (T. Rowe Price seems to be particularly problematic):
    PRWCX - 100% unknown
    PRIDX - 100% unknown
    FLPSX - 100% unknown
    TRSGX - 16.39% LCV, 32.74% LCBlend, 29.97% LCG, and a smattering of others

    So it's not just T. Rowe Price funds, and it's not all Price funds. Whatever it is could be an overnight problem. Just don't rely on what M* shows you for your portfolio now.

  • That's one of the reasons I fled M* a few years ago. Apart from the horrible interface changes on their site, their data often was inconsistent to flat-out wrong or nonexistent.
    msf said:

    M*'s at it again. Instant X-ray and Portfolio Manager are failing to identify the style of many funds. I just tested a few (T. Rowe Price seems to be particularly problematic):
    PRWCX - 100% unknown
    PRIDX - 100% unknown
    FLPSX - 100% unknown
    TRSGX - 16.39% LCV, 32.74% LCBlend, 29.97% LCG, and a smattering of others

    So it's not just T. Rowe Price funds, and it's not all Price funds. Whatever it is could be an overnight problem. Just don't rely on what M* shows you for your portfolio now.

  • It seems to work for me now, including T Rowe price. But I wouldn't be surprised, as M* is a poor shadow of it's former self.

    Their fund analysis used to be quite useful summarizing the funds changes. The new format is obviously computer generated and says very little.

    Can you still access portfolio manager with a free account? That is the only thing I use now
  • edited April 2021
    @sma3 As I understand, YES, you can create a list using their Portfolio Manager. I've never bothered with a "transaction portfolio" because it's just too much work for my purposes. But that's how you get the most accurate results, using the thing. Through the years, all I've done is use a fictional entry price of $9.99 or often, the actual ORIGINAL price of shares when I first bought-in, and left it that way. Then I had at least something to compare new numbers to. "Free" users can use X-Ray, but not the pre-loaded and easy "Instant X-Ray" which will populate the computer fields with the funds/stocks you want to see analyzed.

    You're right: those written fund analyses read like tripe. They have their measuring sticks and gauges, but it all sounds so facile.
  • I think they are in the process of "upgrading" the portfolio widgetery. I received an offer to play along. Since they wanted me to try out premium again, I skipped the offer.
  • M* is beta testing a new Portfolio Manager. It lets you automagically sync your investment accounts and provides a real-time Instant X-Ray for all your account holdings. At least in beta, it doesn’t require a premium membership.
  • I agreed to be a beta tester, but all I see is an upgraded home page with the same information ( without the portraits of the band of renowns, thank goodness, who needs to see Benz face day after day after day?)

    But the portfolio manger is the same.

    Will wait and see. The Stock intersection is useful as is the % change for many different periods, and the delayed quotes ( if you want to violate the first principal of investing and see how much yo made or lost in the last few hours) but their research has faded to a shadow of it's former self, and the fund reports are virtually worthless.

    There are far better sources of information and stock screeners if you want one. I don't believe any of their fund recommendations anymore. They are biased to big massive funds and families that drive their ad sales.

    Some of their advice on portfolio construction is useful, but there are easier to follow books available.

    All in all M* is slowly slipping into uselessness as they have gutted features that were very helpful to individuals in the 1980s and 1990s. Too bad
  • edited April 2021
    sma3 said:

    I agreed to be a beta tester, but all I see is an upgraded home page with the same information ( without the portraits of the band of renowns, thank goodness, who needs to see Benz face day after day after day?)

    But the portfolio manger is the same.

    As a fellow beta tester, when I open the M* homepage, a banner at the top of the page (below the giant ad) has a link that takes me to the Portfolio Beta page.

    I’ve never really used their portfolio manager to track my investments except to do quickie X-Rays so I can’t speak to if more functionality has been added but the beta definitely has a cleaner, more modern look than the dated M* portfolio manager that seems stuck in the ‘90s. Plus it lets me do X-Rays without being a premium member (but that may change).

    The one new advantage is the linking of your investment accounts so you don’t have to manually enter your investments and keep them up to date. While I don’t use M*’s recommendations/ratings, I have found the portfolio manager to be a useful addition to my investment toolkit.
  • One can tell the difference between reports by text writing programs (Mad Libs comes to mind) and living, breathing analysts. The automated reports have a superscript 'Q' appended. See, e.g. GPIOX. Compare that with a real research report, e.g. PRIDX.

    The former seem to contain no information that I couldn't get out of a prospectus or M*'s own data tables. The latter I still find useful.

    Several years ago (before automating anything) M* reduced the number of funds its analysts covered, and also increased the time between analyst reports on each fund. Having made the decision to reduce coverage, it had to decide which funds would still be covered. M* chose to continue covering the large, popular funds.

    If you wish, call it a bias to drive ad sales, i.e. a bias to cover funds that more readers are interested in (as evidenced by dollars invested). As opposed to covering more interesting funds.

    M* started its medalist rating system in 2011. Prior to that there had been Analyst Picks and Pans which seemed more reliable, perhaps because (a) the analysts were picking from a larger universe of covered funds and (b) they didn't try to slice and dice into three shiny colors.

    IMHO M* was never any good at covering stocks. As far as fund information is concerned, I don't think there are better sources. Much of the fund information one finds on other sites is sourced from M*.

  • @MR Ruffles
    I am listed as being in "the Research Beta Group" which obviously does not include me in the Beta Portfolio Testing because there is nothing below the giant add on my pages
  • Another day another Glitch

    Trying to combine to watch list portfolios at M*

    It duplicated all of the positions, doubling my new worth!

    And some of them have gibberish symbols STUSA05VHT

    I wonder what they did in the back office that caused this? Obviously their budget for retail investors has been gutted
  • edited April 2021
    Right. M* has (or had) a message posted today regarding the technical issue. I don’t run their portfolio analyzer - so can’t address that. But as for the basic (archaic) portfolio tracker, it’s proven highly reliable for me, despite today’s problem.

    I always maintain a backup tracker. (“Active Portfolio With Alerts”) I’ll link the Apple app for anyone interested. While it occasionally gets one NAV a bit off (usually citing the previous day’s close), I still love it for the way you can lay out several different portfolio sleeves - if that’s how you invest.

    I have their Ad-free Premium Plan for $29.99 yearly. Hard to complain.

    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/active-portfolio-with-alerts/id840058059
  • At the top of the M* home page:
    The site is experiencing issues with Portfolio Manager displaying duplicated holdings for funds. We are working on resolving the problem.
    Regarding the funky symbols - M* has internal symbols that it uses for, among other things, variable annuity "funds". If one puts them into Portfolio Manager or Instant X-Ray, one can get analytic information about the portfolios, even though there aren't fund pages for them.

    Instant X-Ray doesn't recognize STUSA05VHT, so I'm wondering if you transcribed it correctly.
  • edited April 2021
    I just logged into Portfolio Manager.
    The following message was displayed.
    "The site is experiencing issues with Portfolio Manager displaying duplicated holding for funds.
    We are working on resolving the problem."


    Many mutual funds are displayed twice in my watchlists.
    Just another one of many M* glitches during the past year.
    At least they included an informational warning message this time.
    I guess that could be considered as progress?
  • You would think since it has been working fine for years they could leave well enough alone
  • Ya, I ran into the same thing late last night. It's truly become a routine thing for them at Morningstar. The Portfolio Manager is almost the only thing I bother with over there, and the glitches and screw-ups are way too common for them to be able to make any kind of claim that they even CARE. I like to use it because it's handy, and a lot less clunky than some others, for that same "Portfolio Manager" purpose. That is, when it works properly.
Sign In or Register to comment.