One-stop shop for investment monitoring
Jinfo Blog

By Perrin Kerravala

Abstract

This month’s issue of VIP (VIP Magazine Issue 88) features a review of Morningstar Direct, the flagship institutional investment analytics and reporting tool from Morningstar Inc. Many readers may recognise the Morningstar brand from the New York Times and Associated Press, where their mutual fund tables are published on a daily basis.

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This month’s issue of VIP (VIP Magazine Issue 88) features a review of Morningstar Direct, the flagship institutional investment analytics and reporting tool from Morningstar Inc. Many readers may recognise the Morningstar brand from the New York Times and Associated Press, where their mutual fund tables are published on a daily basis. The company is well-known for mutual funds data, which they have published since 1984, but Morningstar Direct covers a much wider range of investments – including exchange traded funds, hedge funds, stocks and investment trusts, insurance and pension funds and more.

Morningstar Direct offers key investment management analytic capabilities, such as portfolio management, performance attribution and performance monitoring. Designed for institutional use, Morningstar Direct is a one-stop shop for developing, selecting and monitoring investments.

The platform offers real-time performance and ownership data on hundreds of thousands of global investments from all major markets. Morningstar Direct also provides contextual information that investment and fund managers need to aid their decision making, including country-level macroeconomic data, tens of thousands of market benchmark indices, and currency and commodity indices. The platform’s vast data libraries are complemented by qualitative commentary from Morningstar analysts.

Much of Morningstar Direct’s appeal stems from its sophisticated reporting tools, which are excellent for communicating results professionally to clients. The platform includes dozens of easily modifiable pre-formatted chart and report templates.

However, the star reporting feature is the Presentation Studio module. Powered by Microsoft Silverlight, this module allows users to create presenta­tions, quarterly report booklets, and fact sheets that have the look and feel of their own organisation’s branding, including logos, colours, fonts and graphics. Users can build documents using easy-to-learn drag and drop functionality, and can specify their colours and fonts using menus that have the widely-familiar Microsoft look and feel.

Reader’s can find out more about Morningstar Direct’s data coverage and analytical and reporting capabilities in VIP’s full report, available to VIP subscribers by logging into their FreePint account.

Purchase your copy of VIP Report: Product Review of Morningstar Direct, v 3.18 from the FreePint Shop. Or save money by purchasing VIP No. 88, which also includes the VIP Report: Product Review of MarketVisual.

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