I have mentioned a few time in the past that Morningstar is my primary tool when it comes to mutual fund research because, as far as I can tell, it has the broad coverage or mutual funds with the most comprehensive data of a fund. I even wrote about how to use Morningstar to research mutual funds a couple of years ago. In addition to mutual fund research, I also found its ETF research tool quite convenient, especially if I want to see performances of all ETFs on one single page.

Recently, Morningstar gave its mutual fund quote page a major face lift (actually the beta version of the new interface has existed for a while), resulting a much cleaner and user friendlier interface that doesn’t require many clicks on the page to get most of the information I want about a fund.

If you go to Morningstar and type in a fund symbol (here I use DODGX as an example), you will be led to the new fund quote page, which will show you basics of the fund you are interested in.

The fund’s most important data is prominently displayed on top of the quote page, above the navigation bar. Here, before you get into details of a fund, you will find everything you need to know about a fund: Fund price, day change, star rating, yield, total assets, load (load fund or none load fund), expense, turnover, status (open to new investors or closed), minimum initial investment, category, and investment style. In the old page, these information is scattered, some are even one different pages. This alone makes the new interface much easier for investors to research a fund.

The center of the page is a growth chart of DODGX against the fund category it belongs to (large-cap value) and the benchmark (S&P 500). Before, Morningstar only shows fund performance in a few pre-defined time intervals, such as 1-yr, 5-yr, and 10-yr. The new chart tool, using a scrollbar at the bottom of the chart, lets you define your own time interval and plot the chart seamlessly. Both Google and Yahoo Finance have used this technique a long time ago. I am glad that Moringstar is finally on board.

The next feature that’s new is the graphic display of Morningstar Risk Measures of the fund, including Risk vs. Category and Return vs. Category. I like the graph because, like the growth chart, it gives me a quick idea of how the fund compares with its peers. If I want to know a little more about the fund’s risk, I can use the Ratings & Risk tab on top of the screen to find the fund’s risk and return rating for the past 3, 5, and 10 years, as well as the fund’s risk statistics, such as R-Squared, Beta, and Alpha.

Right below the growth chart is Morningstar’s Take of the fund, which includes opinioin of Morningstar’s analysts, role of the fund in the portfolio, and the fund’s stewardship grade. For DODGX, it’s one of Morningstar’s pick and it can be a core holding in the portfolio. Moringstar has an overall grade of A for DODGX (range from A to F, wich A being the highest and F the lowest) for the fund’s stwewardship, which measures the manner in which the fund is run, the degree to which the management company’s and fund board’s interests are aligned with fund shareholders, and the degree to which shareholders can expect their interests to be protected from potentially conflicting interests of the management company. However, this part of the information is not free. To access Morningstar’s analyst reports and grade, you will have to become a Premium Member.

While the first half of the quote page uses more graphs to show the fund’s performance, risk, investment style, and asset allocation, the second half is more of numerical presentation. In this part, you will find a fund’s performance, top holdings, and top sectors, all given in hard numbers. The new addition to the page is the Dividend and Capital Gains Distributions of the fund, which I find is very useful. In the past, I sometimes found it was quite difficult to a fund’s distribution information (distribution date and amount) unless I own the fund. Now, I can get this information conveniently at Morningstar.

I have mentioned in the Morningstar research post that I also look at the fund manager’s tenure when researching a fund. n the interface, Morningstar not only shows the fund manager’s start date, but also the assets under management. Unlike performance data which tells you directly how the fund is doing in the past and how it compares with other funds in the same category, the fund’s management information is more subtle. Generally, the longer the manager has managed the fund, the better the fund’s past performance can be as an indicator (of course, past performance can never guarantee future return and DODGX is a perfect an example of how a fund with a long tracking record can uncharacteristically underperform its peers).

The fund quote page itself contains enough information to give you some quick ideas about a fund. In you want to get into the details, each section on the quote page has its own separate page, which is accessible from the top navigation bar.

Overall, I think the new Morningstar mutual fund quote page is a big improvement over the old one. Have you tried it yet?

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Whenever I need data on mutual funds, whether it’s a fund’s expense ratio, risk measures, or return, I always go to morningstar.com. It has been my trust tool for fund research for year, not only for mutual funds, but for ETFs as well. Then yesterday when I went to Morningstar to get some data for a post I am writing, I noticed something that I didn’t see before: the new Morningstar Chart.

When researching stocks or mutual funds, you can find many free charting tools that get your job done, from simply plotting the change of prices and comparing with benchmarks, like what Yahoo Finance is offering, to analyzing an equity’s pattern from the technical analysis point of view, which is available at StockCharts.com. However, most of these free tools, while maybe good for stock research, are generally not for mutual funds. When checking a mutual fund, I want to know how the fund compares with its respective benchmark, rather than against the S&P 500. I would also be interested in seeing where the fund stands among its peers in the same category. These are not available on just any chart though.

Not the case with the new Morningstar chart.

As you can see from the above screenshot, the Morningstar chart has pretty much everything you need to know about a fund. In addition to what you usually get from other charting tools, the Morningstar chart also displays monthly Rolling Returns of a fund during the time period you select (under the Growth menu, which also include Growth and Price). If you are interested in knowing a fund’s performance, then there are many options under the Benchmark menu, where you can find a lot of benchmarks grouped into categories, such as Morningstar Category, Morningstar Indices, US Indices, Canada, Europe and Asia. For the example I show above, I compared Dodge & Cox International Fund (DODFX) against Foreign Large Value, where the fund belongs, and MSCI EAFE Index, which is the default, to get a sense of how DODFX stacks up. You may say that taht manyother free charting tools also let you compare the a stock or fund against benchmarks or indices. While that’s true, in most of the time you do need to know the name or symbol of the benchmark/index you want to compare with and that’s not an easy job for sure. With the Morningstar chart, it can all be done with just a few clicks.

Under the Event menu, you can add events like dividend distribution and Morningstar Star Rating to the chart, if those are what you want to know.

Anyway, I just started playing with the tool and already found it’s very useful, at least for mutual fund research (I didn’t try with stocks yet). I am glad that Morningstar has made it available, even though it’s still in beta. Considering the unique position Morningstar is in for mutual fund research, this new tool will make fund screening a lot easier. Go to Morningstar and see if you like it.

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When I need to check some data, such as returns and historical prices, of stocks or mutual funds, I usually use free tools such as Yahoo Finance or Morningstar. For my simple needs, those tools are enough, though what they offer are quite limited.

INO Free Stock Analysis

Recently I was informed about another free stock analysis tool, the Instant Stock Analysis from INO (as I Know ). The tool is quite easy to use. To analyze a stock, you need to enter the symbol of the stock you are interested in (I use GOOG as an example), then your name and email address.

After waiting for a while (sometimes the wait could be quite long), the free analysis is delivered into my Inbox, which looks like the following. The report contains a score, developed based on pre-defined weighted formula for the Smart Scan Chart Analysis. The report also gives a short-term trend for the stock (Weak Downtrend for GOOG). Of course, the formula and the score are all developed by INO. If you use a different tool, you may have a different result, depending on what and how elements are weighted.

In addition to receiving the analysis report in email, you can also view it online by providing your email address (the one your provided when requesting the report). For the online version, you can play a little more with the chart.

I am not a heavy stock trader, so I am still trying to figure out exactly how to use the tool to improve my trade (hope it can ). What do you think of the Instant Stock Analysis tool? Check it out to see whether you like it or not.

Market Club Comprehensive Service

If you are an experienced trader and looking for other tools and resources to improve and further educate yourself, you probably won’t be satisfied with the free analysis tool. If that’s the case, then INO also have a premium service called Market Club, which is a paid service but much more comprehensive and with more benefits. For example, with the free Stock Analysis, you will receive one report with trend analysis when you request a report. Market Club members, on the other hand, will receive daily trend analysis report.

From the above screenshot, you can see that you can actually download the data or do further analysis, both functions are available for Market Club members. For the data download function, you will have the option to download the data in four different formats: from 1 Minute to Daily (click the following picture to enlarge for a better view).

To keep you up-to-date with your stocks (or your entire portfolio), you can use Market Club’s Smart Alert tool to send you email alert when an event is triggered. For example, you can set alert for your stock when Price Breakout Above, Price Breakout Below, Chart Analysis Up, Chart Analysis Down, or when the stock reaches a high or low (1 week, 3-week, 4-week, or 52-week).

And with Market Club’s Smart Scan tool, you can scan hundreds of stocks meeting certain criteria (click to enlarge following picture for details).

Finally, Market Club also offers members seminars and workshops on Forex, Option, and Stock trading, as well as other training and educational programs.

If you are interested in having an idea of what you will get from a Trade School workshop, take a look at the handout of Building High-Performance Trading Systems: What Works and What Doesn’t (PDF file) by Nelson Freeburg, editor of Formula Research, or listen to the recorded course

What do you think of Market Club? Of course, the above are just some brief introductions on what the Stock Analysis tool and Market Club can offer. There are a lot on INO.com for me to explore. Be sure to come back and check out what I find out on INO

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As an investor of exchange traded funds (ETFs), I am always on the lookout for new ETF research tools to make researching and investing a little easier. In the past, I have discussed a few tools that I found, such as the ETF rating tool from XTF. And usually when I research an ETF, I first go to Morningstar where I can find some basic information about the fund if I know what I am looking for. Morningstar also has a huge list of all the ETFs available, which is quite convenient.

For Morningstar’s list, the problem is it can only group ETFs based on their investment styles, such as large-cap, small-cap, growth or value, etc., but not the investment “theme” of the funds (what the fund is investing in). For example, if I want to check out EFTs investing in water, I am going to have a hard time finding all the funds from Morningstar’s list. However, most of the time I do want to know all the funds investing in a certain industrial area so I can have an idea of what my options are. That would be nice.

Well, over the weekend I stumbled upon another tool that gives me just that. It’s from a website called ETFMarketPro. What it offers is a ETF Themes that I didn’t find anywhere else:

Everything is clearly categorized. Pretty neat, isn’t it?

And if I go to the Water category as I wanted, I can find a section about Water ETFs in general, as well as the top performers in this group. And of course, the list of all Water ETFs:

I am still exploring the site to see whatelse it has to offer, but so far from what I can see, I think it’s a decent tool. Try it and let me know what you think.

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Not that it’s significant, but in case you haven’t noticed, Google Finance starts to offer real-time stock quotes for securities listed on the NASDAQ. What it means is that from now on, when you type in a ticker symbol in your Google toolbar, the quote you see will be real time, no more 20 minutes delay. Following is a screenshot I took at 3:00 this afternoon for the quote of BIDU.

Google’s free latest offer, however, is a little late and short of its rival, Yahoo, which started the service late last week with coverage of stocks listed on both NYSE and NASDAQ.

I really don’t understand the big deal behind delaying the quote by 20 minutes. If companies like Google and Yahoo have means to get free real-time quotes, they should make them available to users because for everyone who wants to make a trade based on the stock price, he/she already gets the real-time quote from his/her broker anyway. And for those who don’t care, whether the quote is real-time or delayed doesn’t make any difference.

Anyway, I am glad that Google and Yahoo make the real-time quotes available to everybody. It just makes two of my favorite financial tools more convenient.

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