On Feb 21, 7:43*pm, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article
,

*gregz wrote:
Funds are a little easier to work than individual stocks. Long term
investors usually hold on to good company stocks. If your playing around
your mostly short term. *Right now I'm conservative because the market
probably will not got up much over the year, and more likely to go down..
Just because I'm in retirement does not mean I should be so conservative in
the next years.

Greg

Easier to decide when to get out. As soon as it sinks to 3 stars on
Morningstar, they are done and get replaced. I watched too many mutual
funds over the years tank and not come back.
* * * *I hold on to GOOD *company stocks, but also need to know when
they turn.

--
People thought cybersex was a safe alternative,
until patients started presenting with sexually
acquired carpal tunnel syndrome.-Howard Berkowitz

If you are buying (and selling) your mutual funds based solely on
Morningstar Star ratings, you could be making some pretty bad
decisions.

The simple fact that Morningstar keeps tweaking their rating system
should make you very skeptical.

The Star rating is based on a weighted historical performance that may
or may not be valid in today's investment environment. They don't
take manager tenure in account and they don't take changing economic
conditions into account.

I can show you 5 Star funds where the manager has only been on-board
for 6 months. The entire rating was earned under someone else's
tenure. Unless you know what the current manager has done during his
tenure on funds in a similar asset class (amusing its not his first
try at being a fund manager) you have no idea how he will run the
fund.

At least Morningstar is starting to roll out Analyst Ratings, which
are supposed to be forward looking.

Here's a quote from the Investment News website that might make you
rethink your "as soon as it sinks to 3 stars" sell discipline:

"The star and analyst ratings are independent of one another, and at
times, the two ratings may vary widely. One example, the Clipper Fund,
gets only one star from Morningstar's past-performance ranking, but it
gets the top gold analyst forward-looking rating."