Morningstar Funds 500

by Morningstar Inc.

Stewardship Grade Easily find funds that put you first. Manager Profile Know the qualifications of the people who are running each fund. Tax Analysis Tax-adjusted returns and potential capital-gains... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471786640
• ISBN13: 9780471786641
• Release Date: February 2007
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 605 Pages
• Weight: 2.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 8.5" x 10.8"

Customer Reviews

One of the best mutual fund books

I have been buying Morningstar books for mutual funds since 2006. There are a lot of books about how/what mutual funds are, but this is the only kind available for evaluating PAST mutual funds performance. (The other one is from Lipper, which is only available from the web). Morningstar has a long history to keep track of mutual funds and ETFs data. This gives them an advantage to publish their views on various mutual funds. However, readers must be aware that the ratings are based on historical performance. Nobody can predict the market, but if a fund manager performs well over a long time, it is very likely he/she will perform well in the future. This book also provide some insight info such as the manager has his/her own money in, and risk data. A plus of the book is that it provides 50 free mutual fund reports downloadable from Moringstar website. A must have for mutual fund selectors.

Excellent on the funds it covers. Wait for the new one.

I really enjoyed the analysis provided, it seemed to cover most of the bases I wanted to learn about, expenses, tax efficiency, volatility, returns. Obviously it gets dated. It appears to be published early in the year. Be sure to get the latest.

Great info to help you understand the fund you are considering for investment

While many people buy mutual funds because they find them easier than building their own portfolio of individual stocks, in fact buying into these funds is in some ways more complex than buying individual company stocks. How do you know what the fund in invested in (companies and sectors), fees, turnover, who the manager is, what their performance has been, how the fund has performed relative to its peers, and much more? It is not an easy task. This handy book provides you with loads of great information for 500 funds picked by Morningstar. This isn't to say that you should necessarily buy the funds listed here. Morningstar also includes funds you should probably avoid (you have to make your own choices as to what is right for you). One of the interesting things I notices is that simply because something has a four or five star rating doesn't mean that you should buy the fund. This is due to the past performance versus future return probability. It might well be that a well performing fund is now trading at a high price and that the likely future return cannot justify the price. So, the analyst rating also has to be balanced. The editors have packed a huge amount of information onto each of these pages. You get a snapshot of governance and management (with a stewardship score), a chart of performance, a graph with an historical profile, a star rating including risk for several periods, a portfolio analysis, and a few paragraphs providing Morningstar's take on the fund, and contact information. In the back of the book are several lists that slice and dice the various funds different ways according to specific criteria. Since funds do not remain static for the entire year, another nice feature of the book is that you can download up to 50 fresh charts during the calendar year. One word of caution that I learned by hard experience is that if you block pop-ups, you need to make an exception for Morningstar. You will try to download the new chart, your count will decrement, but you won't get the chart because you browser will have blocked the pop-up containing the new chart! That was a tad frustrating. Terrific and interesting information. Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Great book

Great book very informative,a must have if looking to invest in mutual funds