Never mind apples and oranges. The folks at Morningstar are going to start looking at ETFs like they look at traditional open-end mutual funds.

Ben Johnson Morningstar, Inc. Director of Passive Funds Research

Ben Johnson, director of global ETF research at the Chicago-based investment research and mutual fund ratings giant, revealed yesterday a two-pronged change in how his team treats ETFs. First, M* will begin rating some ETFs (about 300 at first) using its qualitative, forward-looking Analyst Ratings (which M* started back in 2011 for traditional mutual funds and which feature the three Olympic medal colors as well as neutral and negative). Second, M* will rate ETFs and mutual funds against each other with its quantitative, backward-looking star ratings.

InvestmentNews covered the changes.

"Investors increasingly see open-end funds and ETFs as interchangeable options when choosing investments," Johnson states. "By combining them into the same peer group, investors can more easily compare investments regardless of the product structure." 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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