The PDF version of the November issue of ETFInvestor is now available for download.

If the link above doesn’t work, you can download this month's issue by copying this address into your browser: http://etf.morningstar.com/Newsletter.aspx?download=currentIssue

The November issue explores Morningstar’s Analyst Ratings for index funds. These forward-looking ratings reflect the analysts’ assessment of how each fund will likely perform against its category peers or a relevant benchmark over the long term. As such, they are one of our most important deliverables.  

Here you’ll find content about:     

• Recent methodology changes to the Morningstar Analyst Ratings and what they mean for index funds
• How the analyst ratings for index funds have done so far
• Morningstar’s approach for evaluating dividend index strategies
• Invesco BuyBack Achievers ETF PKW and WisdomTree U.S. Quality Dividend Growth ETF DGRW
• The impact of including long-term bonds in the Basic Portfolio

New Subscriber’s Guide

We just published a subscriber’s handbook on this site, which is available here: https://etf.morningstar.com/PDF/MEISH2019.pdf. This document outlines the philosophy of the newsletter and the content it features.  

Corrections

• On the bond watchlist in the September and October issues, a briefcase appeared next to SPDR Bloomberg Barclays High Yield Bond ETF JNK, which erroneously indicated that fund was in the defensive portfolio. That briefcase should have appeared next to Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF BSV. We’ve uploaded corrected PDF versions on this site.
• I made a minor correction to the return history for the model portfolios, which will be effective from this issue forward. This affects the backfilled returns for the model portfolios when the portfolio’s inception date preceded a holding’s inception date (based on the index the fund tracks less its earliest fee). Previously, those backfilled returns were calculated with an adjustment to back into the continuously compounded return. We have changed that over to a simple monthly return calculation to be consistent with how our software is calculating the live returns.

Best,

Alex