Dear Morningstar Clients,
This e-mail contains Morningstar Data Release Notes for June 2005. 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
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IN THIS ISSUE
*Fund Category Review
*Essentials Testing Period Ends in July
*Fund of Funds Expense Ratio Change
RECAP OF PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS
*Fund Activation Status During Performance Audits
NEWS FROM MORNINGSTAR
*Hedge Fund Database Update
*Data Questions
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Morningstar Data Release Notes � June 2005
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*Quarterly Fund Category Review
Thank you to all who participated in the recent quarterly category review. New category assignments and the resulting Morningstar Rating(TM) were posted on our Web sites on June 3. The next review will be held in August, and will include only funds with one year of history or less.
*Essentials Data License � Testing Period Ends in July
As previously communicated, Open-End Essentials clients were notified of some enhancements to the format and delivery of their Essentials Data Feed. Test files have been posted on our FTP site for your review. Please be sure to retrieve and review the test files on the FTP site before the testing period ends in July. Effective in August, Open-End Essentials files will no longer be delivered via email. Please contact your account team if you have any questions.
*Fund of Funds Expense Ratio Change
As communicated in April, Morningstar has changed the collection procedures for Fund of Funds and we will now provide the aggregate expense ratio - the sum of the wrap or sponsor fees plus the estimated weighted average of the underlying fund fees.
The data collection is complete. However, because of our full product production schedules, there will be a delay in delivering the updated expense ratios in Morningstar products. We will have more information shortly as we complete development and quality assurance testing. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please contact your relationship manager with any questions.
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Recap of Previous Announcements
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*Fund Activation Status During Performance Audits
�Why is my fund missing from www.morningstar.com? It was there yesterday.�
As part of our commitment to data quality, Morningstar places funds �under review� if our quality assurance tests raise questions about the performance data. A fund may also be put under review if the latest data required for the production cycle is missing. In these instances, Morningstar will take the following action:
*Contact the fund
*If the data cannot be verified, deactivate the fund in Morningstar�s database
*Follow-up until data is received
If corrected performance data is not provided within 24 hours, funds will be restricted from view on www.morningstar.com and risk being excluded from Morningstar�s data feeds, advisor products and printed materials. Once the data is corrected and verified, we will immediately reactivate the fund.
Because of our extensive contacts within fund companies and data providers, funds are usually reactivated within 48 hours. If you have any questions regarding Morningstar�s performance audit procedures, please contact your relationship manager or data analyst.
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News from Morningstar
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*Hedge Fund Database Update
As previously announced, we launched our new hedge fund database in Morningstar Direct in early March. Currently, our hedge fund team consists of a core group of about seven people. We plan to hire a few senior hedge fund research analysts to fill out this team. The research analysts will be responsible for further developing our methodology for hedge fund analysis and providing written analyst reports on individual hedge funds.
*Data Questions
Contact your account team or our data quality department:
Phone: 312-696-6600
Fax: 312-696-6019
E-mail: dataquestions@morningstar.com
Mailing address: Data Questions
Morningstar, Inc.
225 West Wacker Drive
Chicago, Illinois 60606
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