Morningstar withdraws portfolio manager and X-ray

Linton

I have just heard from Morningstar that they are withdrawing these facilities from June this year. They are essential to my investment management strategy as they help ensure that the portfolio is well diversified across all regions, countries, sectors, equity type, asset classes etc.

is there anyone else who provides this data? I am happy to pay.

perhaps it will be possible to construct a spreadsheet that uses Morningstar individual fund data though I don’t know whether the X-ray data for individual funds will continue to be available. However keeping it updated could be a chore.

coyrls

I got the same email.  I have over 10 years of Portfolio data for tracking purposes.  It does say I will be able to export the data in July and I will be looking for alternatives. Interactive Investor gives access to X-ray data for portfolios held with them and I think other platforms might as well.

Alistair31

That really sucks. I have every transaction logged from when I started investing and find it extremely useful. 

What’s the alternative here?

peter021072

I'm rather puzzled why they wish to discontinue these services if as they claim it's due to feedback from their customers.  I was never asked, but complained frequently about site tardiness or outage!

Neither do I understand this. 

What will stay the same

As a free registered user, you’ll still have access to many of the tools and features you’ve come to rely on to find and evaluate investments, including:

• Watchlists, which will transfer over for current Premium and free members 

• Enhanced quote pages with comprehensive metrics   

• Powerful screeners for funds, ETFs, and stocks 

• Fund and ETF analyst research and ratings, which will soon be freely available to all  

• Articles, commentary, and insights from Morningstar contributors 

• Reports and overviews of market performance 

• Email newsletter subscriptions 

You will also be able to sign in using the same email and password associated with your current Premium or free membership.

What's the difference between watchlist and portfolio and will they provide updated prices for a list of Trusts every evening; which is all I need.

For those needing alternatives, Hargreaves Lansdown and Trustnet provide a similar free service. In fact the former uses Morningstar.

SnowMan

peter021072 said:

What's the difference between watchlist and portfolio and will they provide updated prices for a list of Trusts every evening; which is all I need.

I was wondering that too. I've got a watchlist portfolio in portfolio manager which I use to get fund/ETF prices. That's all I need, my transactions are recorded in my own spreadsheet. I don't need or have a transaction portfolio in portfolio manager. How are watchlists transferring over as they are contained within portfolio manager which is going?

Linton

I am interested to see that people are focussing on the portfolio tracking feature which I think is also provided by Trustnet. However it is the analysis of portfolios provided by X-ray which is most important to me. Why do people not want to see, for example, how much of their overall portfolio is in US and the mega techs?

Trustnet does give some data, Howver it is severely limited by not having standard categories. For example if you look at the country assignments you may find a significant % allocated to “international”.

Some platforms do provided access to X-ray for the portfolio held on that platform but I assume that will disappear in June.

Albermarle

coyrls said:

I got the same email.  I have over 10 years of Portfolio data for tracking purposes.  It does say I will be able to export the data in July and I will be looking for alternatives. Interactive Investor gives access to X-ray data for portfolios held with them and I think other platforms might as well.

Fidelity also provide X ray for any portfolio you hold with them, but I am pretty sure this is provided by Morning Star, so will presumably disappear. Maybe the same with II ?

GeoffTF

Linton said:

I am interested to see that people are focussing on the portfolio tracking feature which I think is also provided by Trustnet. However it is the analysis of portfolios provided by X-ray which is most important to me. Why do people not want to see, for example, how much of their overall portfolio is in US and the mega techs?

How reliable are Moringstar's numbers? Where does the data come from? For directly held securities, you can work out your own numbers, based on where the company is incorporated. That may or may not be what you want, but that is another matter. The situation is much the same for single country funds. For funds that cover multiple markets, the only data source will be the fund managers. Vanguard publishes numbers for the end of each month in the middle of the following month. Other managers will differ. With the prices changing every day, it is difficult to get a realistic snapshot.

Morningstar's prices are not always up to date, and brokers can be worse in that respect. The most reliable approach is to use the prices from the exchange or from the fund managers.

Morningstar's portfolio tracking feature probably is not going to save you time over using a spreadsheet manually if you have only a handful of investments, and you can automate the process if you have lots of them. Tools like Morningstar's have a habit of being discontinued or being given "improvements" that make them useless.

noclaf

Linton said:

Some platforms do provided access to X-ray for the portfolio held on that platform but I assume that will disappear in June.

I have an account with AJBELL, I wonder if that means the X-ray tool will be removed from June? It's a shame as also find it useful for a quick n easy 'snapshot'. To be fair I only have 1 ETF invested on the account so it won't make a huge difference but can understand the inconvenience if you have a larger more diverse portfolio.

masonic

Linton said:

I am interested to see that people are focussing on the portfolio tracking feature which I think is also provided by Trustnet. However it is the analysis of portfolios provided by X-ray which is most important to me. Why do people not want to see, for example, how much of their overall portfolio is in US and the mega techs?
Trustnet does give some data, Howver it is severely limited by not having standard categories. For example if you look at the country assignments you may find a significant % allocated to “international”.
Some platforms do provided access to X-ray for the portfolio held on that platform but I assume that will disappear in June.

There are other providers of "X-ray" analysis. For example, HL uses Broadridge. This is perhaps a little better than Trustnet, but not as good as Morningstar. I don't know where else to go for style analysis (value vs growth). Perhaps something else will rise up to fill the void.

EthicsGradient

GeoffTF said:

Linton said:

I am interested to see that people are focussing on the portfolio tracking feature which I think is also provided by Trustnet. However it is the analysis of portfolios provided by X-ray which is most important to me. Why do people not want to see, for example, how much of their overall portfolio is in US and the mega techs?

How reliable are Moringstar's numbers? Where does the data come from? For directly held securities, you can work out your own numbers, based on where the company is incorporated. That may or may not be what you want, but that is another matter. The situation is much the same for single country funds. For funds that cover multiple markets, the only data source will be the fund managers. Vanguard publishes numbers for the end of each month in the middle of the following month. Other managers will differ. With the prices changing every day, it is difficult to get a realistic snapshot.

Morningstar's prices are not always up to date, and brokers can be worse in that respect. The most reliable approach is to use the prices from the exchange or from the fund managers.

Morningstar's portfolio tracking feature probably is not going to save you time over using a spreadsheet manually if you have only a handful of investments, and you can automate the process if you have lots of them. Tools like Morningstar's have a habit of being discontinued or being given "improvements" that make them useless.

For the Morningstar X-ray, as hosted on ii, it seems most of the figures are updated around the middle of the month, perhaps a day or two after the managers like Vanguard make them available (you can get an X-ray of an entire account, which also shows the style categories (Large Growth, Small Balanced etc.) and regional allocations for the 10 largest holdings, or you can get that for any OEIC or ETF you hold (but not, annoyingly, investment trusts) individually). In a few cases, they update pretty much daily (depends on whether the manager publishes daily or not, I guess).

Whether or not this will disappear, I can't tell. I presumed ii and AJ Bell paid Morningstar something to use this. Whether such payments are enough to keep the service available to them, who knows? I have been trying to rebalance my portfolio across regions (and to a certain extent size), with as little CGT payable as possible, and this feature has been very useful for that.