Investors need to get past marketing and sales pitches to know what they're getting when they invest. Morningstar is a great place to get that depth.
Paul and Chris describe how they each use the free Morningstar tools to evaluate mutual fund and ETF characteristics, such as:
Expense ratios
Liquidity and bid/ask spreads
Geographic focus
Value and size tilts
Financial characteristics
Factor exposures
Number of holdings
Tax efficiency and* Charted historical performance with side-by-side comparisons.
Chris also briefly describes how he uses the premium X-Ray feature to compare portfolios with different fund families, including the Best-in-Class ETFs, which he plans to update early next year.
For those interested in a more quantitative approach, please take a look at the Bootcamp video Chris created for the Best-in-Class ETF selection process, where he describes how he uses Portfolio Visualizer to quantify fund factor exposures and factor statistics to estimate expected returns. Here's a link to that video at the time where the Portfolio Visualizer discussion begins: https://youtu.be/UaEC-JZYYJA?t=852)
Here is the video link for this podcast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDN3LyEFk3E
