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I phone M* at about 8:45 AM EST and went through the prompts. Aflter being on hold for about ten minutes without being able to speak with someone I terminated the call.
Part of good service is timely pricing updates along with being able handle inbound customer service calls in a timely manner. This did not happen. Their star rating in now under review.
At about 9:30 AM EST I again phoned Morningstar and after going through the phone prompts my call was taken on the second ring ...
I detailed the concerns I experienced over the weekend to the service representative taking my call who noted my concerns and said they would be looked into and passed along to the appropriate area for further review.
I went on to say it appeared that there were many according to the message boards that were making comment about this and that it appeared from an outsider looking in and as an end user of their products many now had Morningstar now under review ... and, perhaps they were now about to have a downgrade in their star rating.
I passed your concerns along Carling Spelhaug, one of the folks in Corporate Communications for the Morningstar. She's really pretty good, so perhaps we'll hear something interesting back.
Thanks for doing this. I had to start at the bottom of the ladder while you were able to start many rungs up above me. Perhaps, at least they will acknowledge the concern and provide an explaination as to why their systems are getting slower and slower to update price information ... and, more importantly, what they plan to do to remedy the problem.
At about 9:30 AM EST I again phoned Morningstar and after going through the phone prompts my call was taken on the second ring ...
I detailed the concerns I experienced over the weekend to the service representative taking my call who noted my concerns and said they would be looked into and passed along to the appropriate area for further review.
I just spent 30 minutes on the phone with M* going over a number of issues and concerns with their data updates, Portfolio Manager quotes not always correct, etc. I have the email of one of the reps as well as of a supervisor in the Premium dept and the rep asked me if I will write this up and send an email, which I plan to do today.
Old_Skeet: A couple of contact at M* you might try. They always have been helpful when I've had a problem Regards, Ted M*[email protected] M*[email protected]
All fifty two funds within my portfolio have updated with correct pricing by about 7:00 PM EST. I check it against Yahoo Finance and both are currently reporting the same pricing.
Anyway ... everything seems to now be square as the best I can tell. It will be interesting to see how things go moving forward.
I wonder how things went for others that indicated they were having concers with portfolio manager?
Portfolio Manager has not updated from Thursday's close. One Example FAIRX shows a YTD loss of 3.67% vs. 2.30 on the fund page.
Couldn't someone from M* just post something here? Anything???
And as long as we're registering complaints, how can the slow evening updating possibly be justified? At worst, they could just hire one of their kids to transcribe the data from Yahoo.
Is M* really the only service that has all the info on funds? How about Lipper?
From reading the M* boards, this has been going on for a long time. The free services have no problems updating prices. It makes me wonder how much of the other information is not updated?
I use Charles Schwab and have their app on my iPhone. I like it a lot. I have noticed that many of the discount and big brokerages have apps. Since Schwab is my only brokerage, I can only speak for them but their website is very good. I would use it over M* any day and it's free.
Paying for a premium service that cannot get their pricing updated in a timely manner is a huge negative. The brokerage websites and apps might just be the answer.
@JohnChisum: I paid for the premium service for 1 year only and later switched to TRP's free offer of M*. so cannot blame M*, though I keep adding to my TRP holdings at every opportunity for last 7 years.
John- Schwab is indeed very good for all of the stuff that I hold through them. But I don't know if you can build a portfolio pricing report using Schwab for funds not held through them- American Funds and American Century, for example. Do you know if this is doable?
You can use an account aggregation service to get pricing on your full portfolio, more or less, through any broker that offers the service (often using Yodlee software or outsourced to Yodlee).
Schwab apparently used to offer an aggregation service, called "MyAccount" according to this 2001 press release, but it doesn't seem to offer the service now.
Fidelity offers the service (there called "Full View"), T. Rowe Price offers the service (called "Account Center").
On the other hand, Vanguard seems to provide a portfolio pricing service that doesn't require external passwords - like M*, you enter your holdings (shares and type of account, e.g. retirement, by hand). You can find this by going to "Balances and Holdings"; at the bottom of the page is "Other Investments".
Funny you should mention American Century - it seems Yodlee just dropped support for them (i.e. the software can no longer pull account info from American Century).
It is now after 7:30 PM EST as I write and M* Portfolio Manager has failed to up date all positions with Tuesday's 11/11/2014 market close even though the respective fund reports have updated held within the portfolio.
All positions held in the Yahoo Finance Portfolio have updated along with the portfolio report itself.
Old_Skeet
Interestingly, at about 7:45 PM EST M* Portfolio Manager updated.
Most interesting. I was surprised and somewhat skeptical as soon as I read that email, which just came yesterday. That supervisor is in the premium membership dept. Good info John.
I would guess the M* person was referring to data feeds for mutual funds rather than "all" data feeds. It wouldn't make a lot of sense for Morningstar to buy data from an exchange, which I assume they have to do, and then re-distribute it to Yahoo and others. The exchange would want that revenue for themselves and M* shouldn't want the risk of reselling something they have to pay for because its not really their business. Mutual fund data, on the other hand, doesn't go through an exchange and I don't think there's any organized data dump of all mutual fund data, except that M* collects it somehow and others would want to buy that.
The big kicker is that if M* is providing their data to others in a way that makes using other companies websites more attractive that using their own then they have a bit of a problem, not to mention all the other problems they have.
I suspect you're right about M* feeding fund data, not all data. The problems appear to be with M*'s site, not its content. (That is, M* has the data, it's just not presenting it in a timely manner.)
Where I disagree (somewhat) with you is that M* has a problem if its data makes other sites look better than their own. As you suggested, M*'s core product is data, not presentation. M* would do just fine if it had no website and simply sold its data to institutional customers (e.g. Schwab, Yahoo, etc.) that presented data. It would not survive as merely a repackager of others' content.
M*'s chief task is to generate the best content (data) possible - which should help everyone (including downstream presenters) look better. If it is going to have a website and use it for marketing (look at the content we generate) and side revenue, that website needs to be good - but it doesn't need to be the best.
Right now its website isn't meeting that lower standard. So to that extent I agree with you that its data making other websites look better is indicative of a problem.
For what it is worth ... and, form what I have been told. I believe each mutual fund is charged with the task of computing its net asset value at the end of the day and reportfing same to Nasdaq by 6:00 PM EST. Some funds may contract this out and there in perhaps is part of the problem. Slow reporting from the funds themselves and/or their contractor to the exchange.
But, at least, by 7:00 PM EST you would think, in this fast traveling electronic world, all the data feeds for the end users would be current with market closing prices for mutual fund nav reporting.
Somewhere ... something is slowing down the process at Morningstar. Outside looking in, and in my best guess, I think Morningstar is over tasking it's IT Departement. This does not explain though why some mutual fund reports were left with stale pricing over this past weekend. SGGDX being one that I am personally aware of because I own the fund and follow its daily pricing along with that of many other funds that I own and/or watch. Another data source, Yahoo Finance, that I use was reporting SGGDX's nav closing price as of Friday evening. This leads me to believe, the problem is within M*'s IT Department itself, not because it does not have good people; but, perhaps because it just might be over tasked.
In any event this should be deemed to be unacceptable and not allowed to continue.
I am tired of making nav manual adjustments to my weekending spreadsheet due to conflicting data information that I use to generate this weekly report on the funds that I own and/or watch.
Hopefully, things will soon improve as I do like their Portfolio Manager product and its ability to break out certain information beyond pricing.
I note that my DoubleLine fund is always, always slower to report than all my others. DLFNX. It's based in Los Angeles. At 4 pm, it's just 1:00 p.m. out there. But that doesn't change when the Exchange closes for the day.
Is it the fund companies, or the sometimes idiot companies they hire for Customer Service which is the one responsible for getting the end-of-day info. out to M* and anyone else?
I find a reliably precise 15 minute lag between when fidelity updates its information and when google finance updates its data. M* usually updates when google finance does or hours later on occasion, but never earlier. Something about it seems baked in. That secondary websites have a 15 minute lag. Also doubleline does always seem to update after the standard window.
Hi all, I'm a member of Morningstar's corporate communications team. We’ve recently updated the Morningstar.com Portfolio Manager and Quote pages to speed delivery of end-of-day NAV data, with most funds updating an hour or two earlier than in the past. About one-third of our end-of-day fund data comes directly from the fund companies themselves, and those funds can take longer to update. If you find any issues with our data, delayed NAVs or otherwise, please contact us at 312-424-4288 or [email protected].
First I’d like to welcome you to the board as I see you are a recent new member. And, second, I’d like to thank you for your response and letting us know what Morningstar plans to do that no doubt will improve the mutual fund closing pricing concern.
I assure you, your comments were most welcomed and appreciated.
Comments
It is now 9:00 AM EST as I write ...
I phone M* at about 8:45 AM EST and went through the prompts. Aflter being on hold for about ten minutes without being able to speak with someone I terminated the call.
Part of good service is timely pricing updates along with being able handle inbound customer service calls in a timely manner. This did not happen. Their star rating in now under review.
Old_Skeet
At about 9:30 AM EST I again phoned Morningstar and after going through the phone prompts my call was taken on the second ring ...
I detailed the concerns I experienced over the weekend to the service representative taking my call who noted my concerns and said they would be looked into and passed along to the appropriate area for further review.
I went on to say it appeared that there were many according to the message boards that were making comment about this and that it appeared from an outsider looking in and as an end user of their products many now had Morningstar now under review ... and, perhaps they were now about to have a downgrade in their star rating.
And ... So it goes!
I'll keep you apprised.
David
Thanks for doing this. I had to start at the bottom of the ladder while you were able to start many rungs up above me. Perhaps, at least they will acknowledge the concern and provide an explaination as to why their systems are getting slower and slower to update price information ... and, more importantly, what they plan to do to remedy the problem.
Thanks for helping ...
Old_Skeet
Regards,
Ted
M*[email protected]
M*[email protected]
It is about 7:20 PM EST as I write ...
All fifty two funds within my portfolio have updated with correct pricing by about 7:00 PM EST. I check it against Yahoo Finance and both are currently reporting the same pricing.
Anyway ... everything seems to now be square as the best I can tell. It will be interesting to see how things go moving forward.
I wonder how things went for others that indicated they were having concers with portfolio manager?
Old_Skeet
Portfolio Manager has not updated from Thursday's close. One Example FAIRX shows a YTD loss of 3.67% vs. 2.30 on the fund page.
Couldn't someone from M* just post something here? Anything???
And as long as we're registering complaints, how can the slow evening updating possibly be justified? At worst, they could just hire one of their kids to transcribe the data from Yahoo.
From reading the M* boards, this has been going on for a long time. The free services have no problems updating prices. It makes me wonder how much of the other information is not updated?
Morningstar's Portfolio Manager seems to be immensely popular. Wonder what the discount brokerages have in terms of similar tools.
Paying for a premium service that cannot get their pricing updated in a timely manner is a huge negative. The brokerage websites and apps might just be the answer.
Thanks- OJ
Schwab apparently used to offer an aggregation service, called "MyAccount" according to this 2001 press release, but it doesn't seem to offer the service now.
Fidelity offers the service (there called "Full View"), T. Rowe Price offers the service (called "Account Center").
On the other hand, Vanguard seems to provide a portfolio pricing service that doesn't require external passwords - like M*, you enter your holdings (shares and type of account, e.g. retirement, by hand). You can find this by going to "Balances and Holdings"; at the bottom of the page is "Other Investments".
Funny you should mention American Century - it seems Yodlee just dropped support for them (i.e. the software can no longer pull account info from American Century).
It is now after 7:30 PM EST as I write and M* Portfolio Manager has failed to up date all positions with Tuesday's 11/11/2014 market close even though the respective fund reports have updated held within the portfolio.
All positions held in the Yahoo Finance Portfolio have updated along with the portfolio report itself.
Old_Skeet
Interestingly, at about 7:45 PM EST M* Portfolio Manager updated.
--PORTFOLIO NOT UPDATED = TUES 7:25 PM EST -- fpacx showing monday nav-- ---- same for prwcx
Ralph
"Morningstar provides Yahoo Finance with all their data feeds"
https://help.yahoo.com/kb/finance/SLN2310.html?impressions=true
Better get some knee high waders.
Here in Carolina ... They are called manure kickers.
The big kicker is that if M* is providing their data to others in a way that makes using other companies websites more attractive that using their own then they have a bit of a problem, not to mention all the other problems they have.
Where I disagree (somewhat) with you is that M* has a problem if its data makes other sites look better than their own. As you suggested, M*'s core product is data, not presentation. M* would do just fine if it had no website and simply sold its data to institutional customers (e.g. Schwab, Yahoo, etc.) that presented data. It would not survive as merely a repackager of others' content.
M*'s chief task is to generate the best content (data) possible - which should help everyone (including downstream presenters) look better. If it is going to have a website and use it for marketing (look at the content we generate) and side revenue, that website needs to be good - but it doesn't need to be the best.
Right now its website isn't meeting that lower standard. So to that extent I agree with you that its data making other websites look better is indicative of a problem.
But, at least, by 7:00 PM EST you would think, in this fast traveling electronic world, all the data feeds for the end users would be current with market closing prices for mutual fund nav reporting.
Somewhere ... something is slowing down the process at Morningstar. Outside looking in, and in my best guess, I think Morningstar is over tasking it's IT Departement. This does not explain though why some mutual fund reports were left with stale pricing over this past weekend. SGGDX being one that I am personally aware of because I own the fund and follow its daily pricing along with that of many other funds that I own and/or watch. Another data source, Yahoo Finance, that I use was reporting SGGDX's nav closing price as of Friday evening. This leads me to believe, the problem is within M*'s IT Department itself, not because it does not have good people; but, perhaps because it just might be over tasked.
In any event this should be deemed to be unacceptable and not allowed to continue.
I am tired of making nav manual adjustments to my weekending spreadsheet due to conflicting data information that I use to generate this weekly report on the funds that I own and/or watch.
Hopefully, things will soon improve as I do like their Portfolio Manager product and its ability to break out certain information beyond pricing.
Old_Skeet
Is it the fund companies, or the sometimes idiot companies they hire for Customer Service which is the one responsible for getting the end-of-day info. out to M* and anyone else?
First I’d like to welcome you to the board as I see you are a recent new member. And, second, I’d like to thank you for your response and letting us know what Morningstar plans to do that no doubt will improve the mutual fund closing pricing concern.
I assure you, your comments were most welcomed and appreciated.
Very truly,
Old_Skeet