Products May 12, 2002

Morningstar to Enter Index Game

December 17, 2001 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Morningstar, Inc is going into the index business and plans to launch a family of style-based equity indexes to serve as tools for portfolio construction, in the first half of 2002.
Reported by

The Morningstar Indexes will be licensed to institutions for the creation of investment vehicles including mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and derivative securities and will be based on the group’s proprietary Style Box methodology.

Developed initially for the US and European markets, Morningstar’s first index offerings will comprise seven aggregate indices:

· a broad market index,
· three capitalization indices, large, mid and small, and
· three style indices: value, neutral and growth.

And nine Style Box component indices, specifically,

· large capitalization; value, neutral and growth
· mid capitalization; value, neutral and growth
· small capitalization; value, neutral and growth

By linking their fund and stock categories with tools for building portfolios and tracking the market, Morningstar hopes to make it easier for investors to understand their overall positioning and to make necessary adjustments, according to a company news release.

Dow Jones Indexes will be the calculation agent for Morningstar Indices. They will be calculated real time in US dollars, and the daily closing values will be available in Euros, British pounds and Yen.

Performance data, constituent data, and other descriptive statistics will be made available through major data providers, media outlets, as well as through Morningstar’s Web site.

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