Update: Morningstar finally puts on shorts
| Sep 28th, 2007 | Filed under: Performance, Analytics & Metrics | By: Alpha Male |
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You may recall that we had a bone to pick with Morningstar about the absence of any short data on their website (“Existing mutual fund analysis woefully unprepared for 130/30“).
Well “John C” updates the story today with the following comment added to the posting:
Interesting read! For the first time today, I noticed that Morningstar has started to include shorts on their portfolio analysis pages. For example, take a look at this:
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/FundNet/Portfolio.aspx?Country=USA&Symbol=IOTIX#anchor1
When you click on the top holdings, you now see both long and short positions:
http://quicktake.morningstar.com/FundNet/Holdings.aspx?Country=USA&Symbol=IOTIX&fdtab=portfolio
Still, there are improvements to be made, but this is a step in the right direction.
He’s right. The ING 130/30 fund, for example, now includes this nifty graph (circled):
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Morningstar may have shorts, but they don’t know how to analyze them. This week’s Investment News article “Pride of the Quants” quotes a Morningstar analyst saying, “130/30 funds were able to maneuver through August volatility unscathed.” Why? Because they were flat for the month? Given that these products have an average beta of 1.0 to the S&P 500, that means the “30/30 part” was DOWN 5% for the month! Hardly “maneuvering unscathed” and much worse than market neutral funds.