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
What happened with Morningstar Fund Category Return page?
Deleting this seems to be another one of M*'s "simplification" "improvements". I looked for the page a couple of months ago and what you found was the best I could do. I believe there's a thread (or more) on M*'s boards about this, but it's been awhile since I actually looked for this page.
It's a pain, but you can get the missing category averages out of M*'s basic fund screener. Pick a category, e.g. large cap blend. On the results page, flip to "Performance". At the bottom of the page it shows the YTD, 1, 3, 5, and 10 year category averages.
Right now that shows: Large Blend Avg -8.73% (YTD) ;4.15% (1 yr); 7.01% (3 yr); 7.17% (5 yr); 11.39% (10 yr)
If you want to see all the funds in a category and sort, you'll need the premium screener, since many categories have more than 200 share classes. 200 is the max returned by the basic screener. But the premium screener performance page omits 10 year performance. One used to be able to coax this information out by using a custom view with the premium screener, but that feature no longer seems to work.
The old fund quotes (summary) pages are gone from M*. (At least I can't find them.) If you mean the old fund chart pages, one would have to click on a chart's various time frames for each of the time periods. Since these charts/figures present total returns and the category returns page gave annualized returns, there would still be the task of annualizing what one saw on the charts.
Still a lot of work, given that for each category one would have to find a fund in that category and then fetch its performance page. There does not seem to be any easy way to reconstruct the data that M* used to aggregate on a single page.
I withdraw my comment about the M* basic fund screener. While it is free, the "category" performance data at the bottom of the results page is not for the specified category.
As near as I can tell, the category data posted on the clunky "replacement" page that @DavidV posted are approximately correct. The problem with this page is not only that it is nonfunctional (cannot sort or drill down), but that it includes only categories but bond fund and alternative fund categories.
The visual data available on M* chart pages give similar, but slightly different category data. For example, the "new" category returns page says that the three year average long government fund return was 12.34%. In comparison, annualizing the 39.17% total return read from this chart gives a category average of 11.65%.
The chart's category average curve might have been calculated using a different average (e.g. dollar weighted). Also, the chart's default 3 year span differs by one day from the "replacement" category returns page (i.e. not enough to matter).
The legacy performance page gives yet a third set of figures. For 3 year category performance (long term government) it reports 11.79% annualized. At least all sources are in the same ballpark.
Free fund screeners like those from Fidelity and Schwab don't give category average returns at all. Though going to those sites' fund pages will get you to similar category chart and tabular data as is found on M*'s site, from whence the data originate.
Part of the reason for the unavailability of the info on the Morningstar.com[US] site, but availability of the M* info on the Morningstar.In[dia] site may simply be that the US Morningstar team decided that it had become too expensive to continue site support using their off-shored (India) support team.
In India, however, the India-based team may have discovered an offshore (to India) location that was even cheaper than India, and are using that group to maintain the functionality referenced by WABAC in his May 29 post.
However, the US Morningstar team is not as smart or resourceful as their India team, and for that reason decided to eliminate the tool, because it was too expensive to maintain, etc.
My local library system subscribes to Morningstar Investment Research Center. There is a link to ‘Fund Categories’ under the Markets section on the homepage. Fund category returns for the 1 mo., 3 mo., YTD, 1 yr., 3 yr., and 5 yr. periods are displayed.
Comments
It's a pain, but you can get the missing category averages out of M*'s basic fund screener. Pick a category, e.g. large cap blend. On the results page, flip to "Performance". At the bottom of the page it shows the YTD, 1, 3, 5, and 10 year category averages.
Right now that shows:
Large Blend Avg -8.73% (YTD) ;4.15% (1 yr); 7.01% (3 yr); 7.17% (5 yr); 11.39% (10 yr)
If you want to see all the funds in a category and sort, you'll need the premium screener, since many categories have more than 200 share classes. 200 is the max returned by the basic screener. But the premium screener performance page omits 10 year performance. One used to be able to coax this information out by using a custom view with the premium screener, but that feature no longer seems to work.
I have now received one invitation to rejoin at a bargain price.
I would have to see significant changes before I renewed. I think retail investors are now an after-thought.
Or one could look at the old performance pages, such as:
http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VWINX
(scroll down to Trailing Total Returns)
Still a lot of work, given that for each category one would have to find a fund in that category and then fetch its performance page. There does not seem to be any easy way to reconstruct the data that M* used to aggregate on a single page.
I used the word quotes because that is the start of the url:
https://quotes.morningstar.com/chart/fund/chart.action?t=dseex
the, or a, category for the fund (right or wrong, appropriate or not) appears automatically, of course
yes about the subparsing of time periods --- more work
But, none of the links work. I tried 5-6 of them.
===========
Fidelity let you use their fund screener for free, see it (here)
As near as I can tell, the category data posted on the clunky "replacement" page that @DavidV posted are approximately correct. The problem with this page is not only that it is nonfunctional (cannot sort or drill down), but that it includes only categories but bond fund and alternative fund categories.
The visual data available on M* chart pages give similar, but slightly different category data. For example, the "new" category returns page says that the three year average long government fund return was 12.34%. In comparison, annualizing the 39.17% total return read from this chart gives a category average of 11.65%.
The chart's category average curve might have been calculated using a different average (e.g. dollar weighted). Also, the chart's default 3 year span differs by one day from the "replacement" category returns page (i.e. not enough to matter).
The legacy performance page gives yet a third set of figures. For 3 year category performance (long term government) it reports 11.79% annualized. At least all sources are in the same ballpark.
Free fund screeners like those from Fidelity and Schwab don't give category average returns at all. Though going to those sites' fund pages will get you to similar category chart and tabular data as is found on M*'s site, from whence the data originate.
https://web.archive.org/web/20071114083442/http://news.morningstar.com/fundReturns/CategoryReturns.html
In India, however, the India-based team may have discovered an offshore (to India) location that was even cheaper than India, and are using that group to maintain the functionality referenced by WABAC in his May 29 post.
However, the US Morningstar team is not as smart or resourceful as their India team, and for that reason decided to eliminate the tool, because it was too expensive to maintain, etc.
There is a link to ‘Fund Categories’ under the Markets section on the homepage.
Fund category returns for the 1 mo., 3 mo., YTD, 1 yr., 3 yr., and 5 yr. periods are displayed.