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M* basic fund screener discontinued

This screener is no longer available. Use Morningstar Investor to continue
screening with our data and ratings.

Launch Investor
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/screener-basic

The basic screener was a very rudimentary screener. But at least it was free and enabled one to screen based on performance.

Now you can't screen at M* for performance ranges, even if you pay for premium services. The (pay) Investor screener that M* directs you to offers very few criteria, and doesn't provide screening on returns.
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Comments

  • Old M* Premium Screener was gone in 05/2023. So, it was a matter of time that old M* Basic Screener would also be gone.

    New M* Investor Screener is BAD. Its like old Basic+, but has all classes of funds that cannot be suppressed (M* Premium Screener allowed "Distinct Classes"); there is no simple no-load option.

    I have asked M* to provide some update on old M* Portfolio availability in 2024 - it's working for now.
  • How badly do they need clicks to justify their ad rates? Maybe it's not a big issue for them based on their other activities.

    If they get rid of the portfolios, I'm not going to visit to watch the Susan and Dave show.
  • "and doesn't provide screening on returns"

    Why would anyone need that anyway? :(

  • Given how the site has reportedly continued to deteriorate significantly in its utility from what it once was years ago, I'll simply scrunch my eyes, cock my head, and ask "what's Morningstar?" :)
  • I was surprised to discover that it is a public company!
  • Morningstar/MORN IPO was in 2005; +47.6% annualized growth since inception. Founder/Chairman Joseph Mansueto is a Chicago-area billionaire. He is in lots of local news - philanthropy, real estate, etc.

    People who invested just the annual subscriptions for M* Premium or M* Investor into MORN would be rich.
  • Morningstar/MORN IPO was in 2005; +47.6% annualized growth since inception. Founder/Chairman Joseph Mansueto is a Chicago-area billionaire. He is in lots of local news - philanthropy, real estate, etc.

    People who invested just the annual subscriptions for M* Premium or M* Investor into MORN would be rich.

    And now the billionaire wants to take away free portfolio x-ray to make more billions?
  • Portfolio X-ray is still working for me. The screener was a different tool. I remember it being rather clumsy. Or maybe I used it clumsily.
    Mona said:

    Morningstar/MORN IPO was in 2005; +47.6% annualized growth since inception. Founder/Chairman Joseph Mansueto is a Chicago-area billionaire. He is in lots of local news - philanthropy, real estate, etc.

    People who invested just the annual subscriptions for M* Premium or M* Investor into MORN would be rich.

    And now the billionaire wants to take away free portfolio x-ray to make more billions?
  • Personally, I find the Fidelity website much more useful now than M*. The only thing I use M* for is a watchlist that follows an ETF portfolio similar to my holdings.
  • As mentioned, M* is a publicly traded company with the priority to make money for their investors. I believe the stock has returned in the +30% range YTD. PE ratio is in the 170's, overvalued maybe, but it does indicate investors like what M* is doing. I'm guessing the changes being made may irritate some here, but at the same time be rewarding to shareholders.

    Companies change, especially in the quest to reward investors. I guess we can complain about M* eliminating the free stuff or them changing the things we have gotten used to, but they are following their obligation to shareholders, apparently. Isn't it time to except the changes and move on?

  • edited December 2023
    +1 @MikeM / I think there are advantages to investing with companies that are privately held (fully or in significant measure). Same may hold true in doing research. Dunno.

    With public companies the investment horizon may be shorter, management feeling compelled to keep the stock price high and attract new investors. And there’s the danger of “activists” trying to gain a large hold and seeking to monetize some of the assets by stripping away services / service quality. I suppose in a large company the size of TROW that second threat (activists) is small.
  • For some reason, Financial Services industry allows sub par customer focused companies to survive far too long. May be when it comes to money matters humans have sticky behavior.
  • edited December 2023
    @BaluBalu, I'm guessing M* is being customer focused. They make their money on institutions and people who handle money for others. That's their customer now. Their perceived customer just isn't you or me or anyone else on this forum.
  • edited December 2023
    @mikem,

    Do these desired customers have better or legacy tools that we no longer have access to? I hope you are right for their sake. Not sure what they are gaining by the continued loss of reputation or brand in the eyes of those M* no longer wishes to serve but keeps on selling multi year premium membership to.

    I get my membership for free and so I can not complain.
  • Morningstar Direct:
    https://www.morningstar.com/business/brands/data-analytics/products/direct

    Morningstar Office
    https://www.morningstar.com/business/brands/wealth/products/morningstar-office

    Morningstar Advisor Workstation:
    https://www.morningstar.com/products/advisor-workstation
    (video walkthrough) https://advisor.morningstar.com/Enterprise/VTC/TrainingVideos/workstationwelcome/index.html

    and on and on. At the very bottom, literally, of their product list is Morningstar Investor. Watchlists and largely automated fund analyses for a mere $249/year.

    Their customer base consists of advisors and wealth managers, asset managers, and institutional investors. Retail or DIY investors don't even show up as a target segment.
  • Why use M* screener at all when Fidelity is a robust one, includes ETFs, and free?

    See https://fundresearch.fidelity.com/fund-screener/
  • I wonder how much it actually costs them to support portfolio analyzer, the really only useful think there now?

    They made a decision years ago that there was much more o money to be made in institutional and especially advisor support. They must still be making a profit on all the individual stuff essays, etc or they would have shut it down completely, unless their advisor customers find it useful to refer clients to
  • edited December 2023
    I think M* advisor workstations/terminals cost around $10,000.

    It cannot get those kind of revenues from the old M* Premium or the new M* Investor.

    Those who haven't visited M* Discussions recently will find several discussion/Q&A areas now for its professional products. M* now sees it as M* online customer support. So, there is still one lone click for Investing Forums that takes one to the neglected, hard-to-navigate M* Discussions areas. It's also private now, so stuff isn't linkable and login is required just to look.

    Ironically, years ago M* offered lots of free tools to us, but after lots of free debugging and feedback by us, it has moved those to its professional offerings. Its ambition is to become a mini-Bloomberg. It can claim that it offers many features much cheaper than Bloomberg terminals.

    I still hang around M* for TIAA Forum (there is also a Facebook alternative) , etc, but I have moved on for portfolio monitoring and general postings.
  • msf
    edited December 2023
    FD1000 said:

    Why use M* screener at all when Fidelity is a robust one, includes ETFs, and free?

    Because Fidelity's excludes funds that Fidelity doesn't carry.

    For example, in the global small/mid M* category, the Fidelity screener returns 74 OEFs (including closed and leveraged funds) and 15 ETFs; Portfolio Visualizer's screener returns 138 OEFs (same as M* Investor's screener), 14 ETFs, and 7 CEFs. Figures are for share classes, not distinct funds.

    (FYI the ETF it misses is FIXT, an ETF that M* rates gold at the top of the page, but silver in the text that says it was downgraded.)

    Part of the difference is that Fidelity doesn't sell all share classes of funds, e.g. AGCVX (investor class shares) are NTF at Schwab but not sold at Fidelity, so they don't show up in the screener. Since Fidelity does sell the institutional shares AGCSX (albeit w/TF and $5M min), at least the fund shows up in its screener.

    Other funds are completely missing, e.g. TSYNX. This is available even at Vanguard NTF. Not at Fidelity, so not reported by the screener. Not recommending it, just observing that its launch was written up at MFO in 2018.
  • msf said:

    FD1000 said:

    Why use M* screener at all when Fidelity is a robust one, includes ETFs, and free?

    Because Fidelity's excludes funds that Fidelity doesn't carry.
    This is good to know!
    When screening mutual funds, I often rely on Fidelity's mutual fund screener.
    Portfolio Visualizer (PV) is used primarily to backtest portfolios.
    In the future, I'll use both the Fidelity and PV mutual fund screeners.
  • edited December 2023
    Fidelity screener should be good for 93.567+% of investors. Schwab has more funds, let's give it 95.25%. Both have many criteria to select from. That looks like a good solution for a little imperfection.
    If I can't buy a fund at Schwab or Fidelity I don't care because I'm not opening other accounts.
    Others who look for perfection may have to pay a fee.

    This still works but not enough criteria(https://screen.morningstar.com/fundselectoraol.html)
    MFO is pretty good (https://www.member.mfopremium.com/quicksearch/)
  • ML has lots screeners for customers (of course) but easy enough for BoA clients
  • This still works but not enough criteria(https://screen.morningstar.com/fundselectoraol.html)
    Thanks!

    Worth noting is that M* hasn't maintained its basic screener (its "official" one as well as this one) for years. This can be seen in its selection of fund categories.

    For example, it lists "market neutral". That hasn't been around since April 2021, so a search on this category turns up empty. And it doesn't offer the replacement categories: equity market-neutral, event-driven, and relative value arbitrage.

    For 93.567+% of investors, this doesn't matter. Or more accurately, it might matter only if you're searching for one of the new categories. If a category was merged into an older existing one (e.g. long-short credit into nontraditional bond), you'll still find funds, but under a different category.

    Here are the category changes:
    https://www.morningstar.com/funds/introducing-new-alternative-morningstar-categories

  • msf
    edited December 2023
    ML has lots screeners for customers (of course) but easy enough for BoA clients

    Same problem - try finding VTMSX with a screener. Merrill Edge doesn't carry it, so it doesn't show up (Lipper category - small cap core, verified on MFO).
  • yup

    Fpacx for free tho , woohoo
  • edited January 1
    - I looked at M*’s stock price and it’s risen this year - to my surprise. I’m thinking eventually AI is going to take a bite out of their income. You should be able to pull up all the info. they provide - and even more - tailored to your specific needs using AI. Yes, I’m sure they will use AI themselves to provide better service. But, just my guess, that eventually it will ding their viewership and profits.


    - Stumbled across a Schwab page on a fund I was looking at recently. Appears to be an excellent detailed source of data.


    - @msf said, ”For example, it lists "market neutral". That hasn't been around since April 2021”

    I tried to dig up a list of market neutral equity funds (across the internet) the other day to look over. Darned hard to find any. Maybe they’ve gone ouf of fashion? Gosh - couldn’t have been more than 20-25 years ago that I owned one.
  • Categories are another imperfect subject. While SP500 is LC blend, managed/flexible funds are not. I stopped paying attention to M* a long time ago, especially when I'm looking for unique funds.
    A true story: several months ago, my screener found a fund not available. I contacted the fund manager and president of sales and asked if they could bring it to my brokerage. They called me back within 2 days and said YES, but I must invest at least $500K. I told them I would double it. Within 2 weeks they made it happen. I keep getting from them a weekly market summary. I love dealing with small companies with small AUM.
  • edited January 1
    In the meantime, M* has its own chatbot "Mo". It is based on ChatGPT/OpenAI running on Azure/MSFT.

    While general Q&A chatbots (ChatGPT, Bard, Claude) may be fun, these application specific chatbots have better commercial future.

    https://newsroom.morningstar.com/newsroom/news-archive/press-release-details/2023/Mo-an-AI-Chatbot-Powered-by-Morningstar-Intelligence-Engine-Debuts-in-Morningstar-Platforms/default.aspx

    https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mo-an-ai-chatbot-powered-by-morningstar-intelligence-engine-debuts-in-morningstar-platforms-301822115.html
  • msf
    edited January 1
    hank said:


    - @msf said, ”For example, it lists "market neutral". That hasn't been around since April 2021”

    I tried to dig up a list of market neutral equity funds (across the internet) the other day to look over. Darned hard to find any. Maybe they’ve gone ouf of fashion?

    Somewhat the opposite. My next sentence was: "[The basic M* screener] doesn't offer the replacement categories: equity market-neutral, event-driven, and relative value arbitrage."

    M* found the market neutral category large enough with enough variation among its funds to divide it into three different categories. The funds that M* now classifies as equity market-neutral are:
    1. QMNIX / QMNNX / QMNRX
    2. COGIX / COGMX
    3. CAPOX
    4. BDMAX / BDMCX / BDMIX / BGCKX
    5. DECMX / DECIX
    6. GAMNX / QQMNX
    7. GONIX
    8. GUMAX / GUMCX / GUMNX / GUMPX
    9. JMNAX / JMNCX / JMNSX
    10. MNWAX / MNWBX / MNWCX / MNWIX / MNWRX / MNWSX / MNWTX / MNWUX / MNWZX
    11. OTTRX / OTCRX
    12. PTFAX / PFATX
    13. SMNAX / SMNIX
    14. VMNIX / VMNFX
    15. CBHAX / CBHCX / CBHIX / CBHMX

    Since this is a new category, you can't use the basic screener to find them. But you can use the M* basic screener (via AOL) to see that the Communications category is smaller, with just 30 share classes. Unfortunately, that version of the M* basic fund screener doesn't tell you what the funds are - no names or tickers. Good for counting the number of funds in older categories, but not especially useful for finding funds.
  • Interesting information @yogibearbull.

    Thank you @msf for the list. I’ve got some reading to do later tonight!
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