categories - morningstar vs fidelity vs?

Who do you believe when there is a mismatch between what category
morningstar calls a fund vs the fund company, like Fidelity? CANNOT
use the prospectus for most nonindexed cases because they put in weasel
words to relax the limitations even if they rarely intend to vary from
a particular (veiled) strategy.

Say I want a nonindex domestic fidelity fund, of either large, mid, or
small cap... and want to choose value, blend, or growth. Fidelity can
list by their categories, but click on them and morningstar gives
totally different feedback on the historical and current categories!
So if you believe morningstar, you still have to go thru pages and
pages of funds for say blend when you want growth.

Why? I realize there are lags and mismatching timeframes, but it seems
too far out of whack. Beware any large or small cap choice which
easily could be a very differently perforiming midcap! For the
smallcaps, I can understand a fund hanging on to a successful small
stock that grows to mid size sometimes, but...

Re: categories - morningstar vs fidelity vs?

I'd tend go with the stated fund family intent over Morningstar, based
on fund reputation. Another approach would be a mean comparisons from
other industry category objectives, and how they group fund profiles.
To be able to poll a concensus of consumers when matching a vendor's
publicity can also be revealing, indeed, even if less coherent. Still,
a nice thing for PR to be attune in some cadres.

dumbstruck wrote:
>

""For every dissatisfied customer, quantum mechanics ensures its
entropy will be tenfold debauched."" -Anonymous

Re: categories - morningstar vs fidelity vs?

dumbstruck wrote:
> Who do you believe when there is a mismatch between what category
A couple of places that seem to work well for me are:



and the Top 25 Fund ranking program at smartmoney.com

Both of these ranking programs are interactive. You choose the
category, or enter your fund, and it lists the appropriate category.
And it lists them by performance over various time periods. These are
absolutely crucial resources when it comes to selecting one fund over
another.

best,

rono



> morningstar calls a fund vs the fund company, like Fidelity? CANNOT
> use the prospectus for most nonindexed cases because they put in weasel
> words to relax the limitations even if they rarely intend to vary from
> a particular (veiled) strategy.
>
> Say I want a nonindex domestic fidelity fund, of either large, mid, or
> small cap... and want to choose value, blend, or growth. Fidelity can
> list by their categories, but click on them and morningstar gives
> totally different feedback on the historical and current categories!
> So if you believe morningstar, you still have to go thru pages and
> pages of funds for say blend when you want growth.
>
> Why? I realize there are lags and mismatching timeframes, but it seems
> too far out of whack. Beware any large or small cap choice which
> easily could be a very differently perforiming midcap! For the
> smallcaps, I can understand a fund hanging on to a successful small
> stock that grows to mid size sometimes, but...
>

Re: categories - morningstar vs fidelity vs?

On 28 Sep 2005 15:06:32 -0700, dumbstruck <> wrote:
> Who do you believe when there is a mismatch between what category
> morningstar calls a fund vs the fund company, like Fidelity? CANNOT
> use the prospectus for most nonindexed cases because they put in weasel
> words to relax the limitations even if they rarely intend to vary from
> a particular (veiled) strategy...

One point of non-index funds is to be able to (hopefully) take advantage
of whatever is doinging well, because sometimes value does better and
sometimes growth does better. So something that can shift its focus over
time can be better balanced and provide a better return (if the fund
managers know what they are doing). For example in my Principal 401k, the
medium blend fund has been more stable with better long term return than
the medium value or growth. And all my other funds have done better than
the large cap stock index fund.

It is best to review the prospectus, see how the fund has done short term
to long term, whether their current securities are what you would invest
in, and go from there.

I guess some people have a different idea of market cap too, which is why
you might see large cap funds pop up in a list of mid-cap funds. For
example "Stock Investing for Dummies" lists mid cap as $1-5 billion. I
have 2 mutual funds and 4 stocks at Fidelity. One of the stocks has a
market cap of $23.2 billion ($23,293,710,000) which the book shows as the
high end of large cap ($5-25 billion). Yet Fidelity's portfolio analysis
shows only mid and small cap percentages (0% large). It also says I have
79% domestic and 18% foreign, when over half of my money is in 3
international stocks (only 1 is ADR suffix, the other 2 have ISIN and
SEDOL numbers).

Whatever. Just do your own due dilgence and make your own decision. I
don't care how it is listed, just so it goes generally up.