Morningstar.com

YOUR PROGRAMMING TEAM SUCKS

Santa Cruz — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 07:00:52 GMT

They do not eat there own cooking

Their string handling SUCKS...

I could go on but....

GO BIG OR GO HOME!!!

You Ask; We Answer: Our Responses to Your Feedback - Week of November 15, 2009

M*_Edgars — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:23:54 GMT

We at Morningstar.com appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This is our weekly responses to your questions and updates about our site. As always, feel free to reply below with your thoughts and feedback. We love to hear from you!

Updates on Morningstar.com

Stock Financials Beta Pages live on .com!

We have made yet another change on the Quote Page! As always, please take a look and give us your feedback. This forum is a great place for that!

The new stock fundamental page contains more comprehensive data than the current Financials page. You can now see the whole picture of the company's financial positions and operation activities without digging deep into a SEC filing. For each industry, the fundamental page shows a custom set of data to improve usability.

Pages are easy to customize. You can select multiple periods of annual and quarterly data and even change the formatting of the data. All information can be exported to a spreadsheet for further processing.

Here is an example:

http://financials.morningstar.com/income-statement/is.html?t=IBM

Also, you can navigate to the Financials Beta Page following these instructions:

1. Pull up the Quote Page for the security of your interest.

2. Go to the "Financials" tab.

3. At the top of the page you will see "New Beta. Preview our new Financials Page". Click on the link.

Your Suggestions

We would like to thank each and every one of you who have taken the time to provide us with many useful suggestions to improve our site. We are interested in integrating many of your requests to our site and we ask that you be patient with us while we work to bring it to the site. Thank you and keep the suggestions coming in!

Q: Please add the ability to follow changes in the fund’s portfolio under the “Portfolio” tab on the Quote Page.
A: We will consider adding this. Please keep checking this forum for any updates.

Q: Add more information about the membership under “Membership” tab.
A: We are working on this. Thank you.

Q: Please add a tool “Bond Intersection” similar to the existing “Stock Intersection”.
A: Thank you for this suggestion. Please look at this thread and add any suggestions you would like to.

Q: Improve the functionality of “Notes” in the Portfolio Manager. “Notes” should appear when one hovers the mouse over a particular ticker in the portfolio.
A: Thank you for this feedback. We will consider adding this.

Your Feedback

Q: Where can I find Morningstar’s investing classroom and learn more about finance?
A: You can find it in the Personal Finance portion of our site, or use this link: investing classroom.

Q: What is the difference between Instant X-Ray and Portfolio X-Ray?
A: The Portfolio X-Ray is available only to Premium Members. If you are using the Instant X-Ray, you have to enter the holdings each time you want to see the Instant X-Ray. If you are interested in trying the Portfolio X-Ray, you can sing up for free 14 day trial by clicking on any of the icons with "+" symbol.

Q: Why does my portfolio does not receive star rating when I shared it?
A: Your portfolio has to have a history of at least one year in order to receive star rating. This is the most likely reason why your portfolio may be unrated.

Q: Why do “Analyst Pages” look different?
A: Yes, we have made design changes for the analyst pages on .com. We sincerely hope that you will enjoy it! As always, feedback is welcome!

Best of from Discuss

Each week, we'll feature some of the best posts found in Discuss. You can vote for any thread to be included in this list by clicking "Recommend" at the top of the page.

Going International?

Is Great Recession Over?

Emerging Markets: A New Opportunity Again?

Mutual Fund Popularity Contest

Possible errors in P/E and Earnings Growth Rates

kgary — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:07:52 GMT

ANJIX shows a Long-Term Earnings grow rate of 22.1 on its quicktake report portfolio page. This value seems to be incorrect for a large cap value fund. I constructed a portfolio of ANJIX's holdings as of Sep 30, 2009, and configured a MyView page in Portfolio Manager to show Projected 5-year Earnings Growth Rates. 13 of the 47 holdings did not show any values, but the average result for the remainder of the portfolio was a more believable growth rate of 9.88. Is 22.1 correct for NAJIX?

The quicktake portfolio page for SLX shows a Price/Prospective Earnings of 91.7. This value seems high? Is it correct?

I like to use predicted PEG and other portfolio statistics (such as P/B, P/S, P/CF) in evaluating a fund. Such anomalies make it hard for me to have confidence in Morningstar's numbers.

Errors in 1-wk total returns in portfolio manager

kgary — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 21:44:14 GMT

I have set up My View in Portfolio Manager to show 1-week total returns. The values for EWH, EWS, EWT, and EWY are wrong. For example, EWH shows a 1-week return of -0.44 in My View, whereas the correct value is -1.37. The total returns page on the quicktake report for EWH shows the correct value.

PORTFOLIO - MYVIEW results for DGS

Racqueteer — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:16:23 GMT

Are now showing the same problem EMF exhibited last weekend:

3 month month Week

503.91 429.82 434.43

Might be a good idea if the database gurus looked at all the EM etfs and cefs! Or whatever calculations are done Friday for Saturday!

ETF Screener Beta 3: Categories

buycougs — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:24:30 GMT

I have been trying to use ETF screener, I discovered a problem with the categories function.

When I select Categories -> Commodities -> Precious Metals or Categories -> Commodities -> Industrial Metals the screener returns 0 of 859.

I sorted all 859 by category and scrolled down, these categories exist and the fund count in the category screen seems correct.

Hopefully the team can correct this function.

stock screener

ericbar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:50:04 GMT

I would like to screen stocks on the percentage of the stock owned by instituions. I know it is possible to screen on mutual fund ownership which is just a subset of institutional ownership. Will stock screener be updated to utilize the new shareholders data?

Unable to share my portfolio

df21084 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:42:40 GMT

I was previously sharing my portfolio, and then I attempted to change the name of the portfolio to something more meaningful.

I was unable to change the shared name, so I unchecked the sharing check box, and I attempted to rename the portfolio.

Now I am unable to share the port at all, and I am unable to change the name.

Help is appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

Dowloading Morningstar data

nissanboury — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:38:33 GMT

How do I download Morningstar data into my proprietary Excel spreadsheet?

PORTFOLIO - MYVIEW results for EMF

Racqueteer — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:45:30 GMT

For the month and week it shows 88.47% return. I figure that's wrong <g>!

New windows and autorefreshes

racsofp — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 05:24:07 GMT

I have two requests for this site.

First, I ran one of my stock screeners for the first time in a few months. I used to go down the list 3 or 4 at a time, middle click and have 3 or 4 quotes open in new tabs.

Now you have changed it so the companies are forced to open in a new browser. Please take the javascript out that forces these links to open in a new window. If people want to open links in new browsers they can right-click it and choose "open in new window". When you add the javascript that forces this, I have no choice but to wait for new browsers to open for every company I want to look at. I'm not even sure what the point of adding this was. Is there a reason morningstar thinks it makes the site better to force people to open quotes from the stock screens in new browsers instead of the same window or a new tab?

Second, can you please remove the autorefresh from pages like financial statements, balance sheets, key ratios, etc. It is phenomenally annoying to open the financial statements, cash flow statement and balance sheet for a company in different tabs only to have them all autorefresh in the middle of my analysis.

Backtester

taowave — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:27:56 GMT

Hi all,

Has Morningstar ever considered offereing a fundamental backtester for an extra charge?

It would be nice to have the ability to backtest Morningstar ratings as well as custom criteria.If one is serious about investing,a fundamental backtester(without survivorship bias) is essential..Any thoughts

Thanks,

Allan

TPZ

zwilnik — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:52:05 GMT

When I request a quote for TPZ, I get the very minimal, pink-sheets like page.

TPZ, Tortoise Power & Energy Infrastructure, is a CEF, and it's relatively new.

Since I'm quite interested in TPZ, I thought you should know, since I'd like to get better information.

Zwilnik

Problem With Latest Forum Posts

stormer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:37:58 GMT

When I click on the forums I keep getting jumbled posts from various past years and not the latest up to date posts.Any ideas on what I can do?

Sharing a Portfolio

rondom — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:23:38 GMT

How do I share a portfolio?

Is a "Bond Intersection" analysis possible or of interest.

carman — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:56:19 GMT

M_Edgars

Just thought I'd float this to see if M* or its users would like to comment.

I use Stock Intersection on the X-Ray page of Portfolio Manager to see how many of my funds have the same stocks to avoid overloading with one company.

Just wondered if there would be any interest in doing a similar analysis for bonds in fund holdings. I don't know if this is even practical, but thought I'd ask you all.

John

Tracking Individual Bonds in Morningstar Portfolio Tool?

FishNJ — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:02:23 GMT

I was wondering whether Individual Bonds (not Bond Funds) can be tracked in the Morningstar Portfolio tool?

I have tried using the CUSIP which doesn't work.

Individual Bonds don't have a Ticker Yymbol to use in the portfolio tool.

Pl. check the updates on comparative ranking of Shared portfolios

sidnacorp — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:48:47 GMT

Dear Morningstar.com:

I have posted a portfolio that even though is performing ahead of 99% plus of your open mutual funds (tested via a screener), it is being marked up as beating 2% of the funds in the same Large Cap Growth category over the last 3 years.

Can you please look into this.

The shared portfolio is 3rd Millennium Trend Fund.

Thanks.

Are 2002 performance numbers for mutual funds going to fall off on New Year's?

levander — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 02:15:07 GMT

Talking about when you pull up a quote for a mutual fund and then click on "Performance", where the fund's performance numbers for each year are listed. 2002 is the last year listed, although it appears Morningstar has more years in its database.

It would be less of a big deal if 2002 weren't a bear market year and being able to glance at that year and 2008 gives you an idea if a fund has down well in 2 bear markets. It seems like come New Year's, we're only going to have one bear market to glance at... Which for me, is a big deal.

Portfolios

seh1981 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:30:24 GMT

Some of my holdings are still showing prices that are several days old...lots of American Funds but several others also.

Thanks

Posting "ERROR"

norbertc — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 11:07:53 GMT

I've been frequently seeing this message after pressing "Post" while updating an existing post.

New Shareholders and Bonds Pages Live on Morningstar.com!

M*_Edgars — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:05:56 GMT

Dear all,

We have made the following enhancements to our Quote Page on Morningstar.com. We hope you will find this valuable. As always, any and all feedback is welcome!

Shareholders (formerly Owners)

The new shareholders tab has a slew of new data and refined views to give investors an in-depth view of who controls a business.

The brand new Overview tab tells you about a firm’s capital structure (how much is financed with debt versus equity) and if most of the company is controlled by insiders, institutions or mutual funds. There is even detailed information on how many funds and institutions hold shares and how much they are buying or selling.

For fund owners, a Morningstar Style Box shows what styles of funds own the shares and if those funds are on a buying or a selling trend.

There is even a breakdown of what funds and institutions own equity stakes and which ones have debt ownership.

The peer comparison tool makes it easy to see how the firm’s ownership stacks up against its close competitors in terms of market cap, number of owners, % ownership by different groups and more.

Major shareholders and concentrated shareholders gives a more detailed view of the fund and institutional owners of a given security. Info includes star rating, % of firm they own and what % it represents of the fund’s assets.

The buying and selling shareholders tab gives information on who is making moves in or out of a stock.

Check it out: http://shareholders.morningstar.com/owners/OwnersOverview.aspx?Symbol=DELL&Country=USA

Bonds (Beta)

Our new bond pages give fixed income investors the information they need to make informed bond investing decisions.

The Capital Structure view shows investors how the firm is financed. Is it mostly through debt? Equity? Preferred shares? There is also historical information to see how the capital structure has changed over time.

The Yield to Maturity section shows all of the outstanding bond issuances for a company. A graphic displays all of the issues arranged with yield to maturity on one axis, and time on the other. The size of the circle indicates the amount of the issue. This allows investors to see both when the firm has large maturities coming due and what yields and maturities are available to investors.

A list view underneath the graphic gives detailed information on each bond issue.

Finally, the page provides information on the firm’s ability to make good on its debt obligations. Debt and coverage ratios are compared to industry averages, and a credit quality matrix shows rating agency’s take on the creditworthiness of each issuance.

Check it out: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/StockNet/bonds.aspx?Symbol=DELL&Country=USA

Thanks,

M*_Edgars

Portfolio - Notes

PurpleMetal — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:52:58 GMT

It would be very useful to be able to see my notes when I am looking at my portfolio. Currently I have to click on the notes icon to open the notes screen. It would be useful to atleast be able to see my notes by hovering over the entry in Portfolio View. I currently use the notes section to see where those equities are being held. For quick trades it makes it frustrating to have to open the notes page. Thanks. Hope you can help.

SPY

cmcdaniel3 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:28:30 GMT

Although the ticker still shows in my portfolio, there is no longer any nav, no high or low, no total value, no nothing.

Where is link to my premium acct info?

Lorraine10 — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:18:09 GMT

I'm looking for the page that states the annual amount I pay for premium account, my login info, what credit card or whatever I have input as payment source, etc.?