I'm narrowing down my list of best sites to check tentative fund investments. Have M* premium, which does a good job of analysis on many - BUT their Portfolio site is a mess! I've recently found several funds that have FREQUENTLY NOT been updated with the previous day's NAV - and now ALL my portfolios in M* have lost the 2008 column (critical for me in evaluating how much funds lost in worst years), and won't let me add it back (keeps adding 2009 - have complained to them).
Anyway, I love David's reviews of the few funds he has investigated and analyzed, and would be more than happy to have him add a "Premium" MFO subscriber category which would help reimburse at least some of the extensive time he spends on his evaluations if he could do more of these. But, in the meantime, there is another site I like (that I think was recommended by someone here)
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds. Very interesting to see the "News Score", and "Buys" "Sells" etc. counts from various other sites. But I don't know much about the quality of consistency in good results of U.S. News, Zacks, or The Street ratings or recommendations. Any comments about these three, i.e., would you have more confidence in one over the other?
Link is example of a fund just arbitrarily chosen for example.
http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/long-term-bond/morgan-stanley-institutional-long-duration-fixed-income-portfolio/msfix. Sometimes they add a nice "evaluation" commentary for some funds I've checked.
Comments
Regarding the US News pages - the data is much more sparse than M*, and in fact comes from M*. Only the overview page seems to include anything outside of M*, and I'm not sure that what they do is a plus - they equal weight the ratings from five sources. Aside from the fact that this winds up as GIGO (Zacks being totally useless, theStreet not far behind), their methodology is also off - M* gives only 10% of funds 5stars, 22.5% 4 stars, etc., yet US news gives 5 points for 5 stars, 4 points for 4 stars, etc., distorting the distribution. Lipper takes the perspective that there are different factors that cannot be combined into a single score, yet that's what US news does - again equal weighting them.
(Equal weighting is something done time and time again by people when they have no idea of what they're doing. For example, studies show that many people, faced with a decision of where to put their 401k money, put an equal amount into every fund, whether the plan offers 80% equity funds or 20% equity funds. Sometimes equal weighting can be justified; US News offers no rationale. Contrast this with the clear, expansive explanation of methodologies offered by M* and Lipper.)
You may find some interesting reading in this month's commentary, which I just posted.
Happy New Year.
chip
This is not always M* fault. Some companies report their NAV late sometimes which if missed several of M* database updates, could take longer than otherwise. I just wish M* had a column or color coding in the portfolio view that would indicate that the NAV is from previous day.
I also loved the update to stock/bond portfolio allocation percentage differences in returns. One of my favorite links recommended here is the Merriman chart - all these type reinforce my comfortableness with a very conservative portfolio since I don't need the extra gains to have to take the extra risks.
I always look at the 2-4 funds David briefly mentions worth taking a look at - and I especially like your full reviews (i.e., RNDLX, RPHYX, etc.) and would love to see more of those. THANK YOU SO MUCH, DAVID, for this great site!
P.S. I keep forgetting about the MFO Home Page and Commentaries. Couldn't tabs for these be placed at the top of these discussions? Would also maybe remind some viewers to donate when they can. Thank you, Anna, for such a nice design job on the Home page... very simple and easy to read! And THANK YOU ACCIPITER for Falcoln's Eye and the new Navigator, GREAT TOOLS! (Note: I tried entering ETF in Navigator, but nothing happened after enter)
P.P.S. There was a great picture yesterday on the Home page that isn't there now. Really cute child and appealing looking man. Who are they?
Thank you so much for your kind words. I'm so happy you enjoy the new site.
Are you accessing the discussion board through the new link at http://www.mutualfundobserver.com/discussions-3/ or are you opening the discussion board in its own window? If you use the first link the menu across the top should remain. I always visit that link first, then if I feel the need for more space on my screen, I open the discussion board separately.
Also, I believe you're talking about the appealing looking man and cute child that appear on the About and Support pages. If so, they are David and his son Will.
Thanks for the answer re the pictures.... I always thought of David as being a young kid (in relation to me, anyway), so it's nice to not feel so old... and such a cute son!
You noted: " Re The Street... if I had known it was that loud, obnoxious guy on CNN that I always instantly switch channels away from, I would have discarded his opinion immediately (why does he have to yell?. And, with the low opinion of Zacks, looks like the US News site won't be as helpful as I was hoping."
I recall Mr. Cramer started The Street online version in the 2000-2003 era for $100/yr subscription. CNBC, not CNN, eh? I know, too early in the day, some days when writing.
The U.S. News site has some decent info...........get pieces of whatever, from wherever; although as we know, everything has to be tempered with your own knowledge and understanding. One should always note how old any data may be; and hopefully this is noted at a site, write and/or chart. U.S. News does provide this info.
Not sure about your comparing Zach's and usefulness of U.S. News.....what is the connection?
Take care,
Catch
"Re The Street... if I had known it was that loud, obnoxious guy on CNN that I always instantly switch channels away from, I would have discarded his opinion immediately (why does he have to yell?)."
I believe you are referring to Jim Cramer of CNBC (not CNN). Though, There probably are loud and obnoxious guys at CNN as well.
Thank you for the thank you and thank you for finding a problem in the name lookup for ETF's which should now work at www.mutualfundobserver.com/the-navigator
e.g. if you type "telecom" or "proshares" or "ishares" they should work.
fyi the ticker ETF is for "ETF - Aberdeen Emerging Markets Telecom" which is actually a closed-end fund and the program does not have data for closed end funds but there are links to 3 generalized sites at the bottom.
As far as USNews, it is not currently possible to get directly to a focused fund or etf but the link takes you to the site.
SmartMoney is a good Lipper-oriented site. The charts on the "Risk" pages are an easy way to find funds in a Lipper category that fit your own return/risk orientation.
Cheers, AJ
P.S. As far as the M* premium membership goes, I've used it off and on, and recently have found it helpful in getting going on ETFs. It can also, in some cases, give you insights into how the manager runs an open-end fund portfolio that you can't get from reading the prospectus. In other cases, unfortunately, the analyses can be extremely superficial and not a good use of time or money.
Zack's/The Street/M*/S&P++ ratings are on the U.S. News site (example http://money.usnews.com/funds/mutual-funds/intermediate-term-bond/pimco-total-return-fund/pttax), but interesting that some fund searches directly from the Home Page don't show this added information.
I didn't know (or remember) that Yahoo allowed Portfolio set-ups like M* - THANKS! In my early months here, I bookmarked almost every site that was mentioned... now have over 100 (which I never look at as so many), so am trying to cull them down to the ones most informative for me. I haven't rechecked most of these in almost a year, but clearly need to narrow my list down by 95% if I want to do anything else with my life.
I remember the ones I used the most to do my calculations a year ago were M*, Yahoo (like # years up/down, best and worst 1 yr, 3 yr, last Bear Market, Last Bull Market), GoogleFinance (best and worst 3 mos), MarketWatch for Lipper, RiskGrades, and MaxFunds. Have I missed any of this statistical type that you know of?
Good to know that was fixed - thanks (I used an actual ETF in my search, not "ETF"). I haven't compared Falcoln Eye with Navigator. They seem very similar so not sure how much difference, but I really like that FE shows which searches do NOT have any entries (which Navigator doesn't seem to), as saves me the trouble of clicking on those links.
P.S. Not sure what you mean by the US News site not getting to etf. They do have etf searches as option, and showed the few I checked.
Re USNews has changed the way the links work and I can't adapt my program to easily work with their new linking strategy. It is not a problem with USNews but the method to search for it from the programs I have created.
Main difference between Falcon's Eye and Navigator which do the same basic things--
Falcon's Eye
multiple etf, fund and stocks at one glance.
lookup only by ticker.
The Navigator.
lookup by name or ticker.
lookup by partial name or partial ticker.
only fiunds and etfs.
only one fund or etf at a time.
more links to different sites (.e.g. Sec Listings, Historical Prices).
---
conceptual design ideas:
Falcon's Eye was designed for the guy or gal who see things as grids, doesn't mince words ,trumpets their intentions, and wants their results yesterday.
The Navigator was designed with the dream-like stability of the buy and hold investor tinged with an angst-like quality of "je ne sais quoi " when it comes to remembering fund names or ticker symbols. Never right there - but just always a bit past the tip of the tongue.
I like Google for 1-year statistics; haven't found those anywhere else. Haven't been to MaxFunds in a while; I'll have to go look at what's going on over there.
Again, SmartMoney is a good alternative Lipper-based site; I like both what they display and how they do it. Yahoo has historical prices, which I've used frequently, (although you have to be sure they've adjusted for recent distributions - sometimes takes them a couple of weeks).
At M*, I've taken to the up-down capture ratios. They've made it into my personal core set of data points for funds (Sharpe, SD, Capture, over 1-5 years).
For world investing, about once a year I go to the indexq site to see national growth rates and figure world gdp percentages (by copying to a spreadsheet). I more or less keep a neutral position among world regions at percentages between gdp and cap weighting:
http://www.indexq.org/economy/gdp.php
But yeah, you could spend your life online looking at & for statistical info. Gotta cut it off somewhere. I usually don't go much beyond M* & Yahoo on a regular basis, throwing in some Google & SmartMoney maybe once or twice a month.
Re US News... I was confused, and then I realized you were thinking I accessed this site from FE or Navigator. I didn't... I accessed it from my own link.
P.S. I just saw a questionnaire asking with what people manage their portfolios... options were: my broker's site, MSN Money, Google Docs, Google Finance, FT.com, Cake Financial and Yahoo Finance. I've never heard of a couple of these so will check them out. (Interesting that the Yahoo questionnaire didn't mention M* as one of the options).