Dear Morningstar Clients,
We wish all of you a very happy and safe holiday season.
This e-mail contains Morningstar Data Release Notes for December 2003. As always, we invite your comments and questions on our communications, products and services. Please contact any member of your account team. Thank you.
Your Morningstar Team
**************************************************
Morningstar(R) Data Release Notes - December 2003
**************************************************
*Change to Portfolio "Top Holdings" Lists Effective January 31, 2004, the Top 10 and Top 5 holdings lists in Investment Profiles and Licensed Data Feeds will include derivative products that had been suppressed from these lists previously. Complete portfolio holdings lists will not change. This change applies to all abbreviated lists of portfolio holdings. We have seen an increase in the number of funds using derivatives, and their inclusion will more accurately reflect a portfolio�s top holdings. Cash positions will continue to be suppressed from the top holdings lists.
*Automation and Data Submission
In order to ensure that your investment information is shown properly in Morningstar products, please be sure that your operations teams are using the file templates we have provided for portfolio and performance data. Files not in the proper format will not pass our automated business filters, and could result in a delay or omission of data. If you would like an audit of your data submission format, or have any questions, please contact your Morningstar representative.
*Upcoming Data and Methodology Changes
As announced previously, Morningstar is committed to ongoing improvement in our processes and our data. Our research department regularly scrutinizes various data, and makes improvements they think will add value for investors. Listed below are several improvements that will take place in the first quarter of 2004.
*Bond Sectors
On February 29, 2004, Morningstar will introduce a new sector breakdown for bond funds. This new layout will offer more detail about the various types of assets held by domestic bond funds. It includes the following sectors:
1 US Treasury
2 US Agency
3 Mtg Pass-thru
4 Mortgage CMO
5 Mortgage ARM
6 US Corporate
7 Asset-backed
8 Convertible
9 Municipal
10 Foreign Corp
11 Foreign Govt
12 Cash
The sector breakdown is expressed as a percentage of the fund's total assets in bonds and cash. It will be provided for all domestic taxable funds (including the categories Moderate Allocation, Conservative Allocation, Bank Loan, High Yield, and Multisector, but excluding international, convertible, and municipal bond funds). This new data will replace the current government bond sector breakdown (US Treasury, GNMA, FNMA, FHLMC, CMO, ARM, Other), which was fairly limited in scope. The new sector breakdown will give investors more detail about how certain funds are invested. Please note that the names and order of the sectors have changed slightly since the last Release Notes.
*Share Class Consolidation
Effective February 29, 2004, we are consolidating share classes into the 14 categories listed below. We will continue to reflect the registered name of the share class, for example, ABC Mgmt. Co. Aggressive Growth Intsl. Serv. Class II (abbreviations may be necessary), but will group it with other institutional share classes using the codes below. If you need the descriptions for any of the codes listed, please contact your account team.
1 A
2 B
3 C
4 Inst
5 D
6 Adv
7 Inv
8 Retirement
9 S
10 T
11 M
12 N
13 Other
14 "No Load"
Note: To designate the oldest distinct share class in our database, the system looks for the oldest inception date. If a fund has several share classes with that same inception date, the system will use the sequence of the list above to determine the oldest share class. For example, if share classes B, C and Retirement share an inception date, B will be designated "oldest distinct share class."
The new "share class type" data point is available now in DataLab.
*****************************************************
Recap of Previous Announcements
*****************************************************
*Methodology Changes on Investment Profile(TM) pages As announced last month, several improvements will be implemented on Investment Profile pages with January deliveries of December 31, 2003 data. These include consolidation of prospectus objectives, replacement of legacy data with enhanced Value and Growth portfolio measures, and fund-level calculations of various statistics based on trailing 12-month financial data rather than fiscal year-end data.
***********************************************************************
(C) 2003, Morningstar, Inc. This e-mail contains privileged and confidential information and is intended only for the use of the person(s) named above. Any dissemination, distribution or duplication of this communication without prior written consent from Morningstar is strictly prohibited. You are receiving this e-mail because you are a Morningstar Data client, or because you asked that your name be added to the distribution list. If you wish to remove yourself from the institutional client communication list, please hit reply with "remove" in the subject line. If you would like to opt-in to this e-mail list, please hit reply and include your full name, title, company name and address. We will be happy to add you to the list. The newsletter is free, and we never release e-mail addresses to third parties. If you no longer wish to receive this e-mail, we will quickly remove your name from the distribution list.