Morningstar Enhances Research, Expands Indexes
Morningstar is launching a new credit research module as part of its Morningstar Analyst Research Center, a Web-based research portal for financial advisors and other investment professionals.
The company also is creating two new indexes to track energy master limited partnerships (MLPs).
The new credit reporting research module provides access to credit ratings on approximately 700 global corporate credit issuers. The module includes credit reports that provide overviews of companies' creditworthiness, including forward-looking risk measures derived from Morningstar analysts' five-year cash-flow projections.
It also includes Highlighted Issuer reports, which evaluate outstanding bonds from a single corporate issuer and provide detailed analysis on specific bond issues that Morningstar's credit research team finds attractive and others they would avoid. The module also includes recent ratings changes Morningstar has made.
Morningstar also has created the Morningstar MLP Composite Index and the Morningstar MLP Focus Index, which track energy master limited partnerships.
The composite index targets the top 97% of all publicly traded energy MLPs by market capitalization. The Focus Index includes 20 high-quality MLPs that are trading at the most favorable risk-adjusted prices.
Energy MLPs engage in the transportation, treating, processing, refining, storage, marketing, exploration, and production of natural resources. "In 2009, there were only about five diversified MLP investments, now there are closer to 20," says Jason Stevens, head of the company's MLP research.
Rydex Offers New Equal Weight ETFs
Rydex is launching six new Equal Weight ETFs, which weight investment holdings equally across either index constituents or market segments, or both.
The ETF lineup at Rydex, with the exception of CurrencyShares, is known as RydexShares and includes nine sector ETFs. The addition of the six new ETFs brings Rydex's total number of equal-weight ETFs to 16 and total number of exchange-traded products to 34, with assets of more than $6 billion.
Fiserv Offers New Technology Tools
Fiserv Inc. is launching new tools to support the cost-basis reporting regulation included in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.