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M* screwing everything up again

24

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  • edited June 2022
    Just to correct / update my earlier post. The IOS app I referenced costs only $30 per year (at Apple’s App store) - not $50 as I earlier stated. It’s called “Active Portfolio.” No ads. No hassle. Somewhat deficient in being up to date with 100% of holdings. So I wouldn’t want to rely on it as my only tracker. That said, it’s an easy to use and nicely designed app. Tonight I added one new one from the app store. It’s called “Portfolio Trader” and costs $1.99 monthly. No ads from what I can see. This one is more complex. Slow learning curve for me, but getting started. Two tracking apps for $50-55 a year ain’t bad.

    I post only to share what might be helpful information for some in this thread. I realize not everyone needs or wants a tracker. I rely heavily on them because I’ve always designed portfolios around a number of sub-components. It’s helpful for me to get a quick read at any time on what % is currently in alternatives, or income oriented or real assets, etc. And also helpful to understand in which direction each sub-component is moving (and likely reasons). I also like to compare my daily volatility against the volatility of a 3-fund tracker I use (to help keep my own volatility within expectations).

    If nothing more, tracking the diverse array of funds is educational for me. But to each his own. If you tell me you can do better by not tracking your holdings and and shutting your eyes for six months or a year I will take your word for it. We’re all different. For those hunting for a new tracker, it’s not easy finding one that’s user friendly. I tested 6 or 7 this evening and discarded them before coming across one I think will meet my needs.

    - Neither of the apps mentioned requires a phone number. Should they need to contact me it’s done indirectly through Apple.

    Footnote: I am thrilled with the “Portfolio Trader” app from Apple’s App Store. Beautiful layout and functionality compared to the M* tracker. Like driving a modern Ferrari compared to an old mini-van. Unfortunately, it takes a few hours to sort it all out. But at $2 monthly, they’re giving it away. And - yes. There is capability to import or export data for those who wish to do so. I need to follow it for a week to make sure the daily quotes are timely and correct. Currently they are spot-on.

  • This may be the final nail in M* coffin for me. Thanks for screwing up a totally functional system and then increasing the price!

    I have paid them money for lots of thing (remember the old tissue paper thin mutual fund reports?) since probably 1990 or earlier. Every year things get worse and worse.

    I just looked at this new investor. It has only one watchlist on my account, one that I started in 2010! None of the others are there.

    Their "portfolios" used to require dividends to be accepted by hand, making it tedious and clumsy. I download all my accounts into Quicken and then have been easily exporting symbols, number of shares and ave cost as a excel type text file to a M* watch list. It took about a minute. When I bought or sold something, I would delete the old watch list and download the new one witht hat day's date. This used to give me far more data on sectors, and style info etc than the link to M* portfolio manager in Quicken does.

    I wonder what will happen to the Quicken M* link now?

    Does anyone know it f you can import a Quicken portfolio data file into the Portfolios at M*?

    I don't care about date purchased etc., just average cost, to give me performance data

    For now I will continue with legacy but at some point I am sure they will kill that too.

    For what it is worth, Quicken does an adequate job of portfolio management, if anyone wants to give it a try. It is easy to download transactions but has limited analysis.

    I think all of the other places where you can " add an external account" ( I haven't tried those) require you to share your password and login ID via Yodelee. I am not comfortable handing out my password to a third party, although I have never heard of any breaches. When I asked my full service stock broker at Morgan Stanley if they (MS) would prevent or make up losses due to frauds at Yodelee he said NO.
  • FYI M* says they will "retire " legacy later this year.

  • There are a lot of people posting negative comments on M* discussion boards, especially about the lack of importing, for good reason. I would add my two cents worth but their system won't let me sign in, although I can log in to see my portfolios without and issue.

    " We can't log you in because of an issue with single sign-on. Contact your Salesforce admin for help."

    Searching for "import portfolio" leads to Morningstar Direct" a service for professionals that seems to cost thousands.

    It looks like the only way to create a new portfolio is to either add each position in by hand or let M* connect to your brokerage, which obviously requires giving them your passwords.

    I will not be trusting M* with my passwords.

    The only way to provide feed back ( other than the discussion boards) is to email [email protected].

    My account renews on June 28th. To stop auto renewal I have to call them. This is a great lesson in how to loose customers.



  • @sma3: I was as frustrated as you yesterday and at least as annoyed with Morningstar and even more so when they replied insipidly to my email messages. BUT... everything that was in my "legacy" portfolios (which it turns out were actually watchlists) is now converted to "Investor Portfolios". It took less than a minute to convert each one. On the Portfolio Manager page there is a menu. The top line reads Create/ Modify/Views/Tools/Help. Click on "Create" and select "Convert to Portfolio". Moments later it will be done. Then click on Launch Investor. And voila: your old watchlists are now Investor Portfolios which can then be customized to suit your needs. Nobody at Morningstar was able to tell me how to do this simple thing. They weren't even astute enough to realize I was asking them how even though I was explicit in asking. It seems to me that they have outsourced their customer "service" to incompetent people. So I just clicked here and there until I stumbled on how to do it.
  • Update: Pigs Fly! I received a polite, sincere, and intelligent phone call from a Morningstar representative this afternoon, apologizing for the vague instructions for migration of portfolios and watchlists and for sending me an email message addressed to "Hi Dummy1" . I was heartened by the human contact. We had a real conversation. This is in contrast to the boilerplate clueless email messages I received earlier today.
  • Thanks, @Ben, for those illuminating instructions. They were so good my conversions worked on the first try. Can't say it was something I would have discovered on my own. I did not look at M* linked instructions.
  • BenWP said:

    Thanks, @Ben, for those illuminating instructions. They were so good my conversions worked on the first try. Can't say it was something I would have discovered on my own. I did not look at M* linked instructions.

    Good news. Thanks for letting me know it worked.
  • I use Legacy M* Portfolio Manager Watch List that is licensed to T. Rowe Price. I run it in parallel with free M* Watch List. The view is almost the same. However, I think that there may be a few M* versions licensed to T. Rowe Price. For example, l am not able to get the M* analysist report that is available on the paid version of M*, but I get Portfolio X-Ray and when I hover the mouse on the fund that I put in the Portfolio Manager and then click “report”, I get one page that includes “Quote, Performance, Risk, Price, Portfolio, People, Parent”.

    I have one issue with the T. Rowe Price Watch List that is not an issue on free M*. The default view on M* legacy Portfolio Manager in the "Tracking" mode, has columns "$ Change" and "% Change". Since I have loaded the funds and shares, each night I am able to see both the total dollar change and percentage change for the day.

    The default view on T. Rowe Price Portfolio Manager in the "Tracking" mode has columns "Price Change $" and "Price Change %". The "Price Change $" does not have a figure at the bottom of the page. The "Price Change %" does have a % number. There is no column for "$ Change" as there is in M* Legacy Portfolio Manager, but I would think that “Price Change $” would do the same and populate with a dollar number for the days change. But it does not.

    I have set up my portfolio the same in both M* legacy Portfolio Manager and T. Rowe Price Portfolio Manager, so I can't figure out what is going on. The default mode in “Tracking” can't be changed. If I could get the daily dollar change in T. Rowe Price Portfolio Manager, I would have absolutely no need/desire for M* legacy Portfolio Manager. Hopefully, T. Rowe Price will continue to offer this.

    If there is anyone else that use Morningstar Portfolio Manager in T. Rower Price and has a suggestion, that would be great.

  • @Mona, as far as I can tell, so far, M* Investor Portfolios does everything M* Legacy Portfolio Manager does. It has more features but has not lost old features. BUT one must first convert each watchlist to a portfolio. It then migrates as a Portfolio and retains the features of the old watchlists. This process is very quick. If one simply migrates the watchlists all the features are lost. So if done right (which happens to be quick) all that really happens is that the device has a new name, a new look, and is on a new page. Of course something may still go wrong, but so far, so good.
  • There are actually four different services:
    Legacy - portfolio, watchlist
    Investor - portfolio, watchlist

    One can convert (import) a legacy watchlist into an investor watchlist. The investor watchlist page is found by clicking on the "eye" icone (third down on the left margin).

    From there it is easy to import the legacy watchlists - too easy, I forgot exactly what I did.

    But, what you get are your watchlists stripped of quantities and values. Utterly useless for investment tracking purposes. And since the quantities have been stripped, it wouldn't make sense to convert those to investor (new) portfolios even if one could. So the way you did it (convert to portfolios first, then import to investor system) seems to be the only sane option.

    Further, if one does use the new watchlists, it is difficult to locate them if one has more than ten. That's how many are displayed by name across the top of the page (as they are for portfolios). But there does not appear to be an "All" selection (as with portfolios) to get the complete list. One must click on one of the choices presented, and then use arrow keys to scroll through the complete set of watchlists, including those off to the right of the page.
  • @Ben, while the M* Portfolio Manager in T. Rowe Price is just about the same as M* Legacy Portfolio Manager, it is licensed from M*, and separate from M*. It is free and so far, there is no indication that the M* Portfolio Manager in T. Rowe Price is going away.

    The only problem that I am having with the M* Portfolio Manager in T. Rowe Price, that I am not having in M* Legacy Portfolio Manager, is the daily dollar change does not populate (never has). The daily percentage change does.

    I was hoping that someone here also uses M* Portfolio Manager in T. Rowe Price and might know why this was happening.
  • @Ben @msf

    I am glad to hear that converting my current watch lists to portfolios and then migrating them to "Investor" is apparently easy.

    However this does not resolve the lack of an "import " function in Investor. As I mentioned above, I import my portfolios from Quicken into a new M* watch list with the date in the new name when I make significant changes, usually once a month.

    I have never tried importing it into a "portfolio" because I can get cost basis information with just the average cost and number of shares. This gives you performance data for the last few days, but still allows you to do sector, factor analysis of your portfolio as a whole. But the new watch lists, as has been noted, will not have this data.

    Unless M* adds an Excel .csv import function, one of the major reasons I use M* will be lost.
  • Any additional alternative websites to M* 's Portfolio trackers are appreciated.

    I will miss M* a lot, but I'm not paying them $250/yr.
  • edited June 2022
    Not a website. But $1.99 a month gets you a fantastic tracker if you use IOS devices. I’d guess I’ve spent about 6 hours over the weekend mostly just learning my way around - plus setting up multiple portfolios. One emailed question to support was promptly answered, Not the easiest to learn, but has unbelievable functiinality (like automatically designing a pie-chart of each portfolio you enter). Amazing.

    Here’s what I added to my previous post above:

    “Footnote: I am thrilled with the “Portfolio Trader” app from Apple’s App Store. Beautiful layout and functionality compared to the M* tracker. Like driving a modern Ferrari compared to an old mini-van. Unfortunately, it takes a few hours to sort it all out. But at $2 monthly, they’re giving it away. And - yes. There is capability to import or export data for those who wish to do so. I need to follow it for a week to make sure the daily quotes are timely and correct. Currently they are spot-on.”

    Link to above tracker: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/portfolio-trader-stock-tracker/id581430942

    Here’s an Article purporting to describe “The 12 Best Stock Portfolio Trackers”.


  • edited June 2022
    I intend to discontinue using M* tracker as of today. Still need to monitor my new app for about a week to make certain it’s reliable day to day. But so far it’s awesome. Hopelly, in a week I can scuttle the M* tracker completely and send it to a watery depth.

    In all honesty, it’s way outdated. But did provide good end of day pricing.
  • Hank, What is the name of the app you are using. Link doesn't work for me and a search on the Apple app store brings up a few to many.
  • Thanks for suggestions. Will look at them but would like one I can run on Windows PC too.

    Here is the "we don't care if you have been a customer for three decades" response from M*

    Dear ******

    Thank you for writing to Morningstar. We certainly appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us.


    We also understand that it will take some time for our power-users to get used to the new lay of the land.

    At the given Momment, you can either link your portfolio or manually enter holdings.

    We are still taking valuable feedback from clients. We encourage you to click on the Feedback button located at the bottom of all the Investor pages and provide us with any feedback, whether about a specific feature, an issue or challenge you’ve run into, or the experience in general. Additionally, you may receive a survey or two along the way as we look to gauge your thoughts on particular areas.



    Best regards,

    __________________________________

    Sinith M

    Product Consultant

    Morningstar Global Product Support

    Morningstar, Inc.
  • edited June 2022
    Art said:

    Hank, What is the name of the app you are using. Link doesn't work for me and a search on the Apple app store brings up a few to many.

    Yep. There are dozens. Most are awful. Must have tried about 10 different ones over the years. I pasted the tracker’s symbol below.

    Full name: “Portfolio Trader Stock Tracker”

    image

    Only runs on IOS (not windows). One cool thing is you can download the app to different IOS devices and set it to automatically sync your data across all of them.

    The worst aspect is it takes a lot of time to figure out. (I use the “trial & error” method.) So it’s probably only appealing to people who take tracking / model portfolios seriously. There is, however, an embedded link to support and they got back with a helpful answer to my one submitted question in under 24 hours.

    Minor issues: I haven’t figured out their symbol for Cash, so just plugged in SPAXX which works fine for me.

    Edit: Real time quotes (stocks or ETFs) during trading hours? Appears “spotty” in this regard. But I do use another tracker that provides excellent real time quotes - so it’s not a game stopper for me.
  • Retiring from Morningstar.com in 2022:
    Investment Research

    Basic Stock, Fund, and ETF Screeners
    Saved Screens
    Security QuickRank

    Portfolio Analysis

    Morningstar Instant X-Ray

    https://investor.morningstar.com/mm/basic
  • edited June 2022
    If you like using Portfolio X-Ray, check if your local library system subscribes to M* Investment Research Center. Portfolio X-Ray is one of the tools available herein.
  • It seems that M* has already begun the process by making it harder to find the existing tools. It used to be that the main page (www.morningstar.com) had links to the fund screeners (basic, premium), stock screeners (basic, premium) and other tools. Those links are gone. You have to go to the funds page, or the stocks page, or ... to get to those links.

    In other news ... I have a little more information about coaxing the new interactive charts to display the date input boxes. Yogi had the right idea with zooming. The key seems to be how much fits in a horizontal line - something that's affected by the magnification level.

    There's some Goldilocks work going on. Too much space in the line, or too little, and the date boxes don't appear. But if they just fit, then you see them. You can change the magnification or you can resize the window. Either one seems to do the job.
  • edited June 2022
    @msf, the new M* Investor Quote pages (by using the Search-quote window or by clicks on individual holdings of Portfolios ) have Interactive Charts with date windows just as before. Check the chart I posted on TOTR thread.
    https://investor.morningstar.com/

    That browser magnification trick still works for the Chart tab found on M* Homepage Quotes.
  • The new (investor) interactive charts have less information. They don't have a volume bar chart underneath. Volume is also missing when you mouse over the graph.

    The "old" interactive charts, if displaying a single ETF, would provide open, close, high, and low prices for the ETF when mousing over. That's missing in the "investor" charts.

    The "old" interactive charts for ETFs offered windows smaller than a month (1, 5, 15 days), and depending on how small the window was, would display data at frequencies of 1, 5, 10, 15, and 30 minutes in addition to (or instead of) daily, weekly, and monthly.

    So there's a fair amount of data that is lost when migrating from the "old" interactive charts to the "investor" ones. All that seems to be gained is being able to see the date windows without having to coax them to appear.

    Using the date windows to actually input dates is quirky, old or new, but in different ways.

    The new ("investor") charts default to "monthly" for short timeframes. When you set the frequency to daily and then try to display, say, 10/5/21 through 11/8/21, the chart flips the frequency back to monthly. Consequently it resets the dates to 10/29/21 (start) and 10/29/21 (end) - a single data point. These dates work okay with the "old" charts.

    The "old" interactive charts quirks appear with even shorter timeframes, generally under a month. That's when the charts flip the granularity to minutes from days. That data seems flaky, but I haven't looked too closely at it.
  • edited June 2022
    Pardon me if this was mentioned previously.
    Several minutes ago, I attempted to access the legacy M* mutual fund performance charts using the URL below (tried multiple tickers).
    http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VDIGX&region=usa&culture=en-US

    Received following message: The report is no longer supported
    I often used this tool to compare various mutual funds.
    Guess I'll have to find a different tool now!
    Please feel free to share any suggestions that you may have.



  • I was about to post the same thing. This was happening sporadically yesterday. Today the "transition" is complete. Legacy pages have apparently, to borrow from Monty Python, ceased to be! Are expired and gone to meet their maker!
  • @Observant1
    Same with the below link.......was in place a few days ago. I used this "legacy" link to view the "old style" risk graphics, that I preferred.

    https://performance.morningstar.com/fund/ratings-risk.action?t=fbalx&region=usa&culture=en-US
  • Pardon me if this was mentioned previously.
    I attempted to access the old M* mutual fund performance charts using the URL below (tried several tickers).
    http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?t=VDIGX&region=usa&culture=en-US

    Received following message: The report is no longer supported
    I often used this tool to compare various mutual funds.
    Guess I'll have to find a different tool now!
    Please feel free to share any suggestions you may have.

    Hello! I ran into the same thing HERE, trying to link to the "quote" page at Morningstar for a fund or ETF. I forget which it was. I guess it doesn't matter, which... Anyhow, when I went DIRECTLY to Morningstar, I was able to see what I was looking for. The New & Improved junk is JUNK. Just more complicated, where it doesn't need to be that way. Doink-brains in charge.
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