Predictive Rating Methodology For ETFs And Mutual Funds

QUESTION: Why should fund investors rely on backward-looking NAV trends?

ANSWER: They should not.

QUESTION: Why has the traditional, backward-looking fund research dominated the dialogue on funds for so long?

ANSWER: Purveyors of the traditional fund research are extremely good marketers and nothing else has emerged to challenge them.

QUESTION: How exactly should fund research change to be more like stock research?

ANSWER: A fund is only as good as the stocks it holds. To rate a fund, one must research and rate all of its holdings while also accounting for management costs.

There are two dri­vers of future fund performance:

1. Stock-picking (Portfolio Management Rating) and
2. Fund expenses (Total Annual Costs Rating)

Our Predictive Fund Rating is based on these drivers.

We analyze every fund holding based on New Constructs' stock ratings, which are reg­u­larly fea­tured as among the best by Barron's. Next, we measure and rank the all-in costs of investing in a fund (Total Annual Costs Rating).

Our free mutual fund & ETF screener provides ratings and reports on 7400+ funds updated daily.

Figure 1 details the criteria that drive our Predictive Rating system for funds. The two drivers of our predictive fund rating system are Portfolio Management and Total Annual Costs. The Portfolio Management Rating (details here) is the same as our Stock Rating (details here) except that we incorporate Asset Allocation (details here) in the Portfolio Management Rating. The Total Annual Costs Rating (details here) captures the all-in cost of being in a fund over a 3-yr holding period, the average holding period of all mutual fund investors.

Figure 1 - Predictive Fund Rating Criteria and Thresholds for US Equity Funds

Source: New Constructs, LLC