Creating Searches

Search Overview Video

The search tool in Research enables you to find securities that meet defined criteria. For example, you can search the mutual fund universe for all large-blend funds that have a Morningstar Rating of 4 or above, or you can simply search for all large-blend and all large-value funds.

Searches are created line by line. Complete lines have values in the Field Name, Operator, and Value columns.

The Rel (Relation) column defines the relationship between each part of the search. "And" is used to narrow down the universe (you're looking for funds that are both large-blend and have an expense ratio lower than the category average). "Or" is used to widen the universe (you're looking for funds that are either large-value or large-blend).

When you use the Or relation and your search is more than two lines long, you will need to use parentheses to group the appropriate criteria together.

As an example, let’s create a search in the US Mutual Fund Universe for all funds that are either in the large-value or the large-blend Morningstar Category and have a Morningstar Rating of 4 or above.

In the left navigation pane, click Research. The Research area opens.
In the left-hand column, click Open End Funds. The Open End Funds area opens.
Double-click United States Mutual Funds. The universe opens.
From the toolbar above the grid, click the Search button.
Click on the Click here to start a new search link in line 1 of the Field Name column. A drop-down list of groupings or "categories" associated with that security type appears. To see the search criteria available for any given security type, refer to the See Also links.
Morningstar Category is listed under Snapshot, so click the "+" sign to the left of Snapshot. Note: Since Snapshot is the first category listed, it may default to "open".
Click on Morningstar Category. It will populate the Field Name area of the first line.
The Operator box is auto-populated with = which is what we want.
Click in the Value field, and from the drop-down list, select Large Blend.
This completes the first line of criteria. So far, we've asked the search to find all large-blend funds. Now we want it to also find all large-value funds.
On line 2, click in the Rel (Relation) column and select Or.
Click in Line 2 of the Field Name column and again, select Morningstar Category. Make sure the Operator shows as =.
Click in the Value field and select Large Value.

Note: If we ran the search now, the results would list all the funds in both of these categories. But, we want to add another criterion that will apply to both categories: from these two categories, we want to see only the funds that have expense ratios less than or equal to their category average. We will need to use parentheses "( )" to make this happen.

On line 1, click in the small column between the Rel and Field Name columns with the "(" heading. Type a left parens ( by holding the shift key and typing 9.
On line 2, click in the column with the ")" heading after Value. Type a right parens ) by holding the shift key and typing 0.
On line 3, click the Rel column and select And. (We're selecting And because we are now narrowing the universe.)
Still on line 3, click in the Field Name column and select Morningstar Rating Overall.
The Operator field is auto-populated with =. Click on the "=" and a pop-up box opens. Select >=.
Click in the Value box and select 4.
Click Run Search. The number of funds that are large-blend or large-value that also have a Morningstar Rating of 4 or above will be listed under Items Found.
To view the results, click OK.