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I am now firmly in the camp that paying for M* is not worth the money spent. They have lost my portfolio holdings that I spent time creating and amending as it changed. I mainly liked their portfolio xray, and detailed reports but never used it to monitor daily values. So many people on this board have complained about the service, and now I am putting my money to better use. Will cancel tomorrow.
They didn't lose your real money I hope. Just a bunch of numbers in cyberspace.
One advantage of limiting number of funds owned is that were this to happen, wouldn't take long to reconstruct a portfolio from financial records.
Got dozen funds here (counting money market). More than enough. Could throw everything back together in half hour or so were the tracker to evaporate into thin air - as yours seems to have done.
No real money lost, but given the fact that I was paying for the premium service, not getting my money's worth has been on my mind for a while now, this clinched it.
Yep - understand. Don't blame you for being upset. And MFO is a wonderful place to ventilate when these screw-ups occur.
(BTW: if you think that's bad, Strong Funds did actually lose my real money in the late 90s - but "found" it couple days later. Don't know what was going on there. But, pulled it all out and gave it to somebody else to manage.)
I like the idea of using an app on your computer and/or your smartphone to keep track. Lots of them out there. Find one with backup either to secure cloud or your own drive. For Mac I use Investoscope.
Looking at the threads on the M* forums, there are loads of issues regarding the portfolio service and this has been happening for years. Personally I would not pay for their premium services but some do find a benefit with the research part of M*
I use the free M* Portfolio Manager available at TRP, which allows monitoring of daily values and portfolio performance, and provides an x-ray of the portfolio. As for the M*reports, they are not worth my money, as I have more trust in the analyses performed by members of MFO, and select refugees from the M* forums.
I am with Kevin to use M* x-Ray at TRP for free while investing with them as well. M* reports are not all that insightful. One can get more useful analysis here.
I wonder if many of the big fund families have similar research? American Century's brokerage arm gives me M* and Lipper research. Fidelity has some good research if I'm not mistaken.
@John, Awhile back in the Fundalarm days someone informed me that this useful tool is available for free at TRP. It is nice to see how one' portfolio changes (or not) from year to year. I look for overlapping of funds and exposure of individual stocks/sectors.
Morningstary's Instant Xray tool is something that I use at least once per quarter to review my portfolio. In addition, I use it to analize each one of my funds form time to time plus those that I have under review for purchase.
As far as portfolio manager goes I find it to be a most useful tool. However, one has to realize at times it is slow to update. Some of the features that I use are the portolio's forward and trailing P/E Ratios, yield, duration, percent below 52 week high, weekly return, monthly return, 90 day return, 1 year return, 3 year return, 5 year return and 10 year return plus cost basis. There are many other features available. It is a shame that price information, at times, is very slow to update.
Now it is being reported that whole portfolios are being lost.
Seems they might need a make over form the top down.
I find M* very useful for doing single stock research, but the website has errors way too often for a major corporation. As I've noted before, your local library may have some of the M* premium resources for free. M* has a lot of very good information, but their website seems fragile, possibly can't take the traffic? Not enough effort put into the site's infrastructure? I don't know.
@Ted Yup!!! This movie should be mandatory viewing before graduating from high school; and likely in particular in some class studies, i.e.; business, ethics studies, social science,etc. The boardroom scene, with the "boss" is a classic as to "how things work in the real world". I'll stop........have already wandered too far off the subject path. Regards, Catch
Things are BAD, "a depression" and I'm mad as Hell, the guy killed himself!...I think every young person should have to watch it also.....maybe they would find a better way to solve their (financial) problems
Amazing thing happened. After I cancelled my premium membership at M* my portfolio magically reappeared. Will stay with just the free version. I get my portfolio totals at ML, but I did use M* for research, plus yahoo and Fidelity (left there in 2013 but I still get to use the research tools). Thanks for the comments and suggestions.
Comments
One advantage of limiting number of funds owned is that were this to happen, wouldn't take long to reconstruct a portfolio from financial records.
Got dozen funds here (counting money market). More than enough. Could throw everything back together in half hour or so were the tracker to evaporate into thin air - as yours seems to have done.
But ... go ahead and bash M* all you want.
Yep - understand. Don't blame you for being upset. And MFO is a wonderful place to ventilate when these screw-ups occur.
(BTW: if you think that's bad, Strong Funds did actually lose my real money in the late 90s - but "found" it couple days later. Don't know what was going on there. But, pulled it all out and gave it to somebody else to manage.)
Looking at the threads on the M* forums, there are loads of issues regarding the portfolio service and this has been happening for years. Personally I would not pay for their premium services but some do find a benefit with the research part of M*
I use the free M* Portfolio Manager available at TRP, which allows monitoring of daily values and portfolio performance, and provides an x-ray of the portfolio. As for the M*reports, they are not worth my money, as I have more trust in the analyses performed by members of MFO, and select refugees from the M* forums.
Kevin
Morningstary's Instant Xray tool is something that I use at least once per quarter to review my portfolio. In addition, I use it to analize each one of my funds form time to time plus those that I have under review for purchase.
As far as portfolio manager goes I find it to be a most useful tool. However, one has to realize at times it is slow to update. Some of the features that I use are the portolio's forward and trailing P/E Ratios, yield, duration, percent below 52 week high, weekly return, monthly return, 90 day return, 1 year return, 3 year return, 5 year return and 10 year return plus cost basis. There are many other features available. It is a shame that price information, at times, is very slow to update.
Now it is being reported that whole portfolios are being lost.
Seems they might need a make over form the top down.
Old_Skeet
Regards,
Ted
Network: Made As Hell Scene:
Yup!!! This movie should be mandatory viewing before graduating from high school; and likely in particular in some class studies, i.e.; business, ethics studies, social science,etc.
The boardroom scene, with the "boss" is a classic as to "how things work in the real world".
I'll stop........have already wandered too far off the subject path.
Regards,
Catch