Morningstar withdraws portfolio manager and X-ray

ColdIron

jaybeetoo said:

Don’t bother with the Hargreaves Lansdown X-ray analysis - it’s useless.  For example, if you have a global investment trust it categorises it as a UK share - it doesn’t analyse inside the investment trust.

True that

6 figure portfolio of 9 ITs

SnowMan

Morningstar have switched off the portfolio manager facility last night as planned

They have in theory moved over the watchlist facility. But in practice they've made it unusable as a way of accessing fund and ETF prices for the following reasons as far as I can see

1. They no longer show the date the closing price is at.

2. The fund price used to be showing as the previous day's close if you went in the following morning. This is no longer the case and some of the prices are from the day before

3. The prices are only available to 2 decimal places now, whereas under the old watchlists they showed the actual price usually. 

For example L&G European Index I acc currently shows as 7.14 whereas the actual fund price at close on 27th June is 720.4. The actual fund price at 26th June was 714.2. So they should be showing 7.204 and not 7.14, and it's not even right as the previous day's price because of the rounding (7.14 versus the 7.142 correct figure). So the price is both out of date and showing to too few decimal places  

 

Alistair31

Really struggling to find an alternative to the MS Portfolio 

peter021072

I'll be using Trustnet or/and Hargreaves Lansdown from now on, although the latter obtains prices from Morningstar so I'm not sure if the changes will affect them (you don't need to be a client of HL to use their system, although I was in the past). Both of these sources seem to display the prices to the full number of decimal places. 

talexuser

The new site design appeared this morning, last night was the old format. In the free portfolio price lists I see add and delete functions so you can update lists as you sell and buy stuff. I thought they said something about not being able to edit once migrated? I just used them for prices and always found Morningstar to have the latest updated prices soonest, whereas Trustnet and ii were late in the evening or even next day.

talexuser

Unfortunately they copy and paste into excel is now much worse, prices are less accurate in terms of numerals and out of date as Snowman pointed out, and have GBX added to the copy which messes up the cells in excel configured to multiply with the spreadsheet holding to provide an instant valuation. Looks like it will be Trustnet from now on 

Shimrod

For those on ii (and so I assume other platforms) the portfolio x-ray feature remains available. There was a question about whether it was going from everywhere - although I would have expected a communication from ii if it was being withdrawn across all platforms.

talexuser

I have found a workaround if you paste Morningstar figures in excell to calculate your portfolio. If A1 gets pasted as GBX1218.00 then make A2 =RIGHT(A1,8) which will come out 1218.00 and can be multiplied by your holding for a total. Likewise a paste of GBX540.00 needs =RIGHT(A1,6).
Only of use if their prices get back to being as up to date as before!

peter021072

talexuser said:

I have found a workaround if you paste Morningstar figures in excell to calculate your portfolio. If A1 gets pasted as GBX1218.00 then make A2 =RIGHT(A1,8) which will come out 1218.00 and can be multiplied by your holding for a total. Likewise a paste of GBX540.00 needs =RIGHT(A1,6).
Only of use if their prices get back to being as up to date as before!

I don't use Excel, but if the number of digits change e.g. GBX999 to GBX1000 then the formula would need to be changed, which might also lead to confusion if you don't see it. I suspect a better way is to knock off the GBX part, although you might also need to change the text to a number as well.  For example:

The following formula converts the text GBP999 in cell a1 to the number 999 in whatever cell you use, or the text GPB1000 to the number 1000, in Apache Calc without changing the formula. 

=VALUE(RIGHT(A1;LEN(A1)-3))

It might be the same in Excel but with a comma instead of a semi-colon. 

=VALUE(RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-3))

I'm sure someone can confirm, or advise accordingly. Unfortunately, my Excel refuses to work at all without activating it, at which point it'll try to take over from Calc.

Incidentally pasting it from Morningstar places a £ sign in front in my case rather than GBP, but you get the general idea!  

talexuser

Yes, that works great on GBX4digits and GBX3digits, but falls down on £2.90. For £2.90 I just had =RIGHT(copy cell,8) pulled down as the formula and it came out as 2.90 by accident ok.

Morningstar generally has trusts as GBX pence and funds as £.

It's a good exercise to get the paste working just for our satisfaction, but if they continue to have fund prices with only 2 decimal places, Morningstart is not much use from now on in that aspect.