Morningstar Rating Overall
The Morningstar Rating, commonly called the star rating, is a measure of a separate account's risk-adjusted return, relative to other separate accounts in the same Morningstar Category. Separate accounts are rated from 1 to 5 stars, with the best performers receiving 5 stars and the worst performers receiving 1 star.
Morningstar Category
The Morningstar Category identifies separate accounts based on their actual investment styles as measured by their underlying representative holdings (portfolio statistics and compositions).
Product Type
The product type explains the structure of the investment vehicle. The separate accounts database provides a choice of either a separate account composite (CP) or a co-mingled pool (PD).
Equity Style Box
The Morningstar Style Box is a nine-square grid that provides a graphical representation of the "investment style" of stocks and separate accounts. For equity separate accounts, it classifies securities according to market capitalization (the vertical axis) and growth and value factors (the horizontal axis). By providing an easy-to-understand visual representation of stock and separate account characteristics, the Morningstar Style Box allows for informed comparisons and portfolio construction based actual holdings, as opposed to assumptions based on a separate account’s name or how it is marketed. The Style Box also forms the basis for Morningstar’s style-based separate account categories and market indexes.
Fixed-Income Style Box
Listed for both domestic and international fixed-income separate accounts, with the exception of convertible bond separate accounts. The data focus on the two pillars of fixed-income performance: interest-rate sensitivity and credit quality. Morningstar splits fixed-income separate accounts into three duration groups [short-(S), intermediate- (I), and long-term- (L)] and three credit-quality groups [high- (H), medium- (M), and low-quality (L)]. These groupings display a portfolio’s effective duration and credit quality to provide an overall representation of the separate account’s risk, given the length and quality of bonds in its portfolio. As with equity separate accounts, nine possible combinations exist, ranging from short duration/high quality for the safest separate accounts to long duration/low quality for the riskiest.
Total Return (quarter-end) YTD, 52 Week, 3 Year, 5 Year
Morningstar collects quarterly gross and net returns for separate accounts and commingled pools from the asset management firm running that product.
Total returns for periods longer than one year are expressed in terms of compounded average annual returns (also known as geometric total returns), affording a more meaningful picture of separate account performance than non-annualized figures.
Morningstar calculates total returns, using the raw data (gross and net quarterly returns) collected from separate account companies.
% Rank in Category (quarter-end) YTD, 52 Week, 3 Year, 5 Year
This is the separate account’s total-return percentile rank relative to all separate accounts that have the same Morningstar Category. The highest (or most favorable) percentile rank is 1 and the lowest (or least favorable) percentile rank is 100. The top-performing separate account in a category will always receive a rank of 1.
Percentile ranks within Categories are most useful in those categories that have a large number of separate accounts. For small universes, separate accounts will be ranked at the highest percentage possible. For instance, if there are only two international hybrid separate accounts with 10-year average total returns, Morningstar will assign a percentile rank of 1 to the top-performing separate account, and the second separate account will earn a percentile rank of 51 (indicating the separate account underperformed 50% of the sample).
Firm Name
The name of the asset management firm representing the separate account.
Manager Name
The name of the individual or individuals who are employed by the advisor or subadvisor who are directly responsible for managing the fund’s portfolio, as taken directly from the managing firm.
Manager Tenure
The number of years that the current manager has been the portfolio manager of the separate accounts. For separate accounts with more than one manager, the tenure of the manager who has been with the separate account the longest is shown.
Total Assets $MM
The total assets of the separate account, recorded in millions of dollars. Total-asset figures are useful in gauging a separate account’s size, agility, and popularity. They can help determine whether a separate account product focusing on small-company stocks, for example, can remain in its investment-objective category if its asset base reaches an ungainly size.
12-Month Yield
The 12-month yield, also known as a distribution yield, is provided to Morningstar by the asset management firm running a separate account.