Morningstar Enhances Investment Web Site

According to a press release, the Morningstar.com home page has been redesigned to better highlight Morningstar’s analysis and provide investors with a broader market perspective. New features include European and Asian Indexes, commodities and Treasury yield data, corporate earnings and economic calendars, and news headlines from global markets.

On the Funds page, new fund reports, now in beta, allow investors to select a benchmark that can be used throughout the report to chart fund, category, and benchmark performance over several trailing periods, the release said. Portfolio holdings data shows not only the size of a fund’s position in a given stock, but also how long it could take the fund to unload its stake if it were forced to sell.

In addition, more thorough fund manager biography information provides data on tenure and total assets under management, so investors can see if a manager’s attention is divided among several other funds.

On the Stocks page new stock reports, now in beta, allow investors to scrutinize a firm’s financial statements in new ways. Investors can choose to view the income statement on a per-share basis or as a percent change from the previous period to uncover fundamental performance trends, or drill down to see research and development spending relative to cost of goods sold to evaluate a firm’s critical spending priorities.

“Insider’s View” reports executive’s buying and selling activity within the context of total shares held by that insider. In addition, investors will be able to view stock quotes from foreign exchanges in the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, China, Australia, Canada, and several Nordic markets.

Portfolio Manager, which allows investors to track and graphically depict their personal portfolio performance over time, now allows investors to customize time frames, select different benchmarks to make more relevant comparisons, and choose from more than 150 data points to analyze their portfolios. A new corporate actions feature allows investors to set preferences for dividends and splits, and the “Get Price’ function automatically retrieves the price for a newly entered portfolio holding based on the security’s closing price on the purchase date indicated.

To schedule a demo of the new features on Morningstar.com, contact Courtney Goethals Dobrow at courtney.dobrow@morningstar.com.