Designed for institutional use, Morningstar Direct is an Internet-based research platform that enables you to perform in-depth performance and holdings-based analysis of investments. It is the exclusive source for underlying details on proprietary Morningstar statistics. Morningstar Direct delivers sophisticated functionality and a fully integrated database.
Institutional researchers conduct style analysis to identify gaps within an investment lineup or to better understand an investment management strategy. Use Morningstar Direct to detect the contribution of investment style to manager performance. Is an investment using a diversified approach or a more concentrated strategy? The style analysis capabilities in Morningstar Direct include:
Holdings-based style analysis powered by Morningstar Equity Style BoxSM methodology
Returns-based style analysis with confidence zones developed for evaluating statistical accuracy
Portfolio import capability to enable analysis of your most recent portfolio or a portfolio that is not in the Morningstar database
At the heart of institutional investment research is the creation and analysis of peer groups. Whether you are responsible for competitive analysis or regular performance reporting, it all begins with identification of the subject investment�s true peers. Efficiently compare and contrast the subject investment with the peer group using Morningstar Direct:
Define peer groups via basic filtering, sorting, and ranking, and advanced search criteria
Calculate numeric rank and percentile rank on the fly for your custom peer group
Benefit from a full set of portfolio and operational characteristics, and performance and risk statistics
Customize data time periods, benchmarks and more to meet your research needs
Integrate investments from various data universes in a single peer group to enable research such as best in-class money manager searches
Managers are primarily hired to add value, either by generating excess returns or managing risks. It is critical that manager skill be evaluated objectively and thoroughly. Morningstar Direct provides the following capabilities to help accomplish these goals:
Choose benchmarks from a large set of market indices
Create and use blended benchmarks in calculating performance/risk statistics, including information ratio, tracking error, beta, up-/down-side measures.
Use a long history of monthly returns, both net and gross of expenses, in custom performance and risk calculations
Use historical portfolio holdings and aggregated statistics to evaluate past portfolio decisions
Institutional research requires efficient access to a broad set of investment data, the flexibility to customize data points, and sophisticated ranking and display capabilities. Because it's from Morningstar, you know Morningstar Direct is powered by high quality investment data. Customization options abound -- create blended benchmarks, customize MPT statistics, and define time series calculations on any of 150 data points to evaluate consistency or detect special events for further analysis.
Data Features
Full set of risk, operations, portfolio and performance data points
Historical portfolio holdings and a comprehensive set of fundamental, value and growth characteristics on both portfolio and holding levels
Morningstar Category assignments
Performance and risk statistics, including Treynor ratio, Sortino ratio, information ratio, excess return, tracking error, up-/down-side measures
Extensive customization options including benchmarks, displays, and rolling time periods
Currency conversions among all major currencies
Seamless integration of data universes
Data continually refreshed throughout the day
Historical portfolios holdings dating back to early 1997
Monthly performance data dating back to 1975
Gross performance history for manager skill evaluation
Detailed fee and expense data
Actual and estimated cash flows
Pre-inception performance data
Full portfolio holdings for manager strategy and investment style analysis
A large set of operational characteristics on firm and product/strategy levels, e.g., performance compliance characteristics and personnel information
Complete data set at all three levels -- underlying fund (NAV), subaccount and policy level
Proprietary Morningstar statistics
Pre-inception performance data
A full set of portfolio statistics based on complete holdings (top 10 holdings are included)
Monthly performance data for performance and risk evaluation and reporting
Currency conversions among all major world currencies, including Euro, Sterling and Swiss Franc.
Exchange-traded funds
Closed-end funds
Market indexes
User imported data, holdings and returns
User constructed aggregates (portfolios and blended benchmarks)
Relationships, trends and patterns are often revealed only when presented graphically. Since the output of investment analysis serves as decision-support, statistical honesty and precision in its presentation are critical. The reports in Morningstar Direct add clarity and understanding to your communications. Choose from a library of predefined reports or customize graphs and tables to present conclusions in a way that is uniquely your own. The data in Morningstar Direct is updated daily, so you can get started on regular reports earlier than ever before.