Welcome

Mutual Fund Observer's premium site provides fund screening tools, analytics, and ratings updated monthly, plus additional commentary to complement our main site.

MFO Premium search tools feature:

Lipper Global Data Feed and Lipper Global Flow Feed.
U.S. Mutual Funds, ETFs, ETNs, CEFs, and Insurance Funds.
All share classes, survivors only.
Extensive risk and return metrics back to 1960.
Key US index and allocation performance back to 1926.
Numerous evaluation periods, including lifetime, YTD, multi-year, multi-month, decadal, calendar decade, plus full, bear, bull and other unique market cycles.
Tailorable, sortable, and exportable result tables.
Storable Watchlists, Searches, and Preferences.
A suite of analytics: Flows, Correlation, Rolling Averages, Up/Downside Capture, Calendar Year and Fixed Period Metrics, Batting Averages, Benchmark Comparisons, Trend and Momentum, Lipper Leaders, Category Averages and Ferguson Metrics.

MultiSearch, our main search tool, will sort through thousands of funds based more than 300 screening criteria, seriously. Its Pre-Set Screens provide an easy way to get a quick overview on markets and notable funds.

Other tools include Fund Family Scorecard, Dashboard of Launch Alerts, Portfolios, Category Averages, MFO Charts, and Quick Access Analytics, plus our legacy QuickSearch, Risk Profile, Dashboard of Profiled Funds, Great Owls and Three Alarm Funds.

Performance updates are posted monthly, typically on first Saturday of the month. Month to date performance and other ancillary info, like holdings, are updated weekly. Flows are updated 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month.

User feedback drives near continuous site upgrades, so if you have any issues, see something amiss, or have suggestions for improvement, please email (admin@mfopremium.com). We will address soonest.

What's new?

As of Saturday, 14 December 2024:

Month-ending November ratings updated with Refinitiv's 13 December datadrop.
Fund flows also updated through 6 December.
Introduced Price-Based Metrics, as descrobed in our December commentary.
Expanded Fund Family Scorcecard, including family annual revenue based on assets under management and expense ratio.
Introduced Quarterly Metrics tool, as descrobed in our October commentary.
Restored ETNs and Trading Funds (Dedicated Short Bias and Equity Leverage) to database and ratings.
Refinements to Calenday Year category averages and flow sums.
MFO now rolls up all flow data to the oldest share class level. Flows of other share classes remain as reported by Refinitiv.
New blog post with link to mid-year review webinar. Posted chart deck and session video on home page.
Add annualized return to TipTool in Flow and Returns chart tools for periods greater than 12 months.
Expanded flow analytics to Calendar Year tools: fund flows, total net assets, ratings, category breakouts.
Added new tools to assess fund flows: Flow, a four-in-one combo chart, Flows, and TNA (total net assets). All can be found via the updated Analytics user interface in the navigation bar, or via the Analyze buttons in MultiSearch.
Updated Datatables, the main engine of our site, with its newest release (dt2.0), a major upgrade as described here by the good Allan Jardine. You will find sutble style changes across all the search tools.
Posted links to 2023 Year-End Review presentation and video recording, both here on home page.
Established @MFOPremium YouTube Channel, which will host instructive videos to demo site features. The first is Demo Total Return Chart Tool.
Enhanced MFO Charts with legend placement option and no minimum life limitation ... chart display period no longer limited by youngest fund.
Several display periods, including Since COVID, as described here.
Weekly display periods: Month-To-Date (MTD) and Weeks-To-Date (WTD), YTD plus MTD, for return and drawdown metrics making them current as of data drop date, typically last Friday.
Upgraded payment portal for subscribers and resubscribers to PayPal Commerce Platform.
Added Additional Decimal place View option to MultiSearch results table.
Added MAXDD Ratings to Calendar Year and Fixed Period Analyze tools in MultiSearch.
Added Reset button to MultiSearch mainpage, which clears all selected criteria, sets results table to default state, and erases site session and local variables.
Converted all benchmark comparisons and attendant correlation and alpha/beta metrics to industry recognized "Best Fit" Indexes versus the proprietary Lipper Global Indexes used previously.
Established separate Benchmarks Group in MultiSearch table, breaking out from Portfolio Group.
Enhanced Preferences, enabling easier integration of new columns and column order changes into set Preference. Now, includes column widths!

June marked entry into another bear market and beginning of new market cycle, denoted "The Great Normalization."
Quick access analytics, as described in our June Commentary.
Logarithmic scaling option in MFO Charts.
Added MFO Charts to MultiSearch tool, as described in our March Commentary.
Added Calendar Month Ratings to MultiSearch and ability to screen by calendar year return APR and drawdown MAXDD.
Added RATE Reference Indices to support annuity modeling in PORTFOLIOS tool.
Added additional display periods to help assess Fed Taper and Normalization periods. See Definitions.
Added 1, 3, and 5 year Fund Family Ratings to better assess near-term performance of more established families. See Families.
Added several Bond Portfolio metrics to MultiSearch, including Effective Duration and Average Coupon.
Added Excess Return and MAXDD to Analyze/Calendar Year and Analyze/Period Performance tools in MultiSearch.
Added SubFamily and SubAdviser to screening options in MultiSearch.
Expanded, more descriptive column headers in MultiSearch.
Added Early Cycle data (S&P 500 Back To 1926) to MultiSearch.
Added Decadal Evaluation metrics, After Tax ratings, and Adjustable Columns feature to MultiSearch.
Added two "Super Bull" evaluation periods to MultiSearch, which ignore the short but steep declines of Black Monday [Oct 87] and CV-19 [Mar 20].
All Tables can now be exported to a formatted Excel spreadsheet. Thanks to Allan Jardine of SpryMedia and associate Paul Jones.
Added "Mega Ratio" to Ferguson Metrics, which is an outperformance measure adjusted by consistency, risk and expense, developed by Brad. His latest!
Added MultiSearch ability to screen for funds by benchmark, up to five. Find this new option under "More Basic Info" group.
Added exponential moving averages & momentum metrics to MultiSearch screening options. Find these new options under "Trend & Momentum" group.
Enhanced JumpScroll feature and more export options when saving Watchlists, Searches, and Preferences.
Posted video from 30 July "Impromptu" webinar on MFO Discussion Board.
Mid-Year Update Brings Rolling Batting Averages and Trend Ratings, as described here.
Posted charts and video from 15 July webinar here.
New MultiSearch Column Selection Menu for quick-and-easy results table customization, making for a more responsive tool, previewed here.
New MultiSearch Display Periods, Model Portfolios, and Pre-Set Screens, as described here.
New MultiSearch screening metrics include: Lipper Leaders, Equity Portfolio Ratings, Debt and Currency Holdings, and Smart Beta.
New MultiSearch features include options to overwrite and nickname during export of WatchLists, Searches, and Preferences to user profile.
Added Mixed Asset, Alternative, Commodity, and Money Market to Exclude Categories feature.
Added additional options to MultiSearch: Set APR against key reference indexes, like SP500, and set "Less Than" Sector Allocations. Both were requests from subscribers. Thank you!
Store up to 10 Preferences in MultiSearch. Each Preference holds your preferred view: Active Groups on Search Input page, column order in Results Table, and much more.
Posted charts and video from 15 April webinar here.
Expanded Ferguson Metrics to include a "Life" period, or more specifically "relevant life," which according to Brad Ferguson, is not younger than 3 years but not older than period beginning CY 2008, start of GFC.
Redesigned MultiSearch user interface to select criteria arranged by groups: click "Expand" button to see all groups, or individual group buttons to expand/collapse criteria within a group.
New MultiSearch features include: Exclude Categories options, Socially Conscious "Plus" option, and added 30, 40, and 50-year rolling periods in Analyze/Rolling feature.
New MultiSearch features include: "Jump Scroll," which helps quickly navigate to metric groups; fundname pop-up display on symbol hover; and "Plus" options to include fundname, manager, or adviser searches independent of other criteria.
Added "Dashboard of Launch Alerts," which summarizes performance of funds highlighted in MFO's monthly Launch Alerts feature. Just click on "Launches" in navigation bar near top of page.
Store up to 25 Searches, which define selected search criteria in MultiSearch, as described here.
Store up to 25 Watchlists and 25 Portfolios in MultiSearch. Each Portfolio can hold up to 50 funds.
Portfolio Analysis tool upgrade, as described here.
Posted charts and videos from MFO Premium Webinars: Guest Lynn Bolin and Back To Basics.
Added five new evaluation periods to MultiSearch: 4, 5, 7, 8, and 11 mo.
New MulitSearch features include criteria to select funds based on Return Greater Than Yield, Yield Ratings, and Industry Sector Allocations, as described here.
New MulitSearch features include pre-set screen called Morningstar Barometer ETFs, ESG Scores, and more ETF and CEF metrics, as described here.
Added returns for Last 12 Months to Trend group in MultiSearch.
Some MultiSearch updates: Watchlists can now hold 100 funds. Added Interest Fee, often relevant in CEFs. Added Junk Plus NR (Non Rated) weight and removed NR from previous Junk weight metric.
Added nine new evaluation periods to MultiSearch and Portfolios tools, as described here.
Users can now customize names of Watchlists and Portfolios. Just hover over default name and enter new name.
Added ability to screen for Exchange Traded Notes (ETNs) in MultiSearch.
Newest features to MultiSearch include breakouts of Bond Credit & Duration, Yearly Return Ratings, Current Month Inflow/Outflow, Price/NAV Premiums and Discounts, and ability to screen for Alpha, Tracking Error and Information Ratio, as described in Back To Basics.
Added several new features to MultiSearch, including Holdings data, expanded Portfolio metrics, and Multi-Year and Ferguson Ratings, as described in Looking Under the Hood at Holdings.
Posted Best Funds of the Decade.
Incorporated several new features into MultiSearch, as described in Data Across Ten Decades.
Revised MultiSearch "Include" options: "Include Averages" adds category averages for all funds in the results table. Similarly, "Include Benchmarks" adds the assigned Lipper Global benchmarks. See Revised MultiSearch “Include” Options.
Two new changes to MultiSearch: Added Expense Ratio (ER) Ratings and revised the Averages methodology to include all metrics across selected evaluation period. See Premium Site Updates and Definitions.
Added Bear Market Deviation, Down Market Deviation, and Three Alarm Risk, along with attendant ratings, to MultiSearch, as described in A More Robust Down-side Market Metric and on the Definitions page.
Added Portfolios tool, which enables users to determine risk and return metrics at rolled-up portfolio levels. Click on Portfolios in navigation bar at top of any page.
Added Calendar Year and Fixed Period Returns to MultiSearch Results table ... scroll far right. (Same info as in Analyze tool, just making these data front-and-right, thanks to suggestion from Sam Lee.)
Blog post: WisdomTree Fund Family.
Blog post: US Market Over The Long Run.
Blog post: Introducing MFO Premium's New Home Page.
Blog post: Barron's Best Mutual Funds You've Never Heard Of.
Added 4, 6, 8, and 9-year evaluation periods to MultiSearch.
Added another PreSet Screen to MultiSearch, called The 11 Sector ETFs.
Upped default Row display to 100 ... may need to hit tool Reset or exit browser window to take effect.
Enlarged format of the MultiSearch screening criteria input panel.
Added QuickSearch tool, a "lite" version of MultiSearch, and consolidated our main site search tools into the premium site.
Added ability to export (up to 25 funds) from the MultiSearch results table to WatchLists.
Added option to hide empty columns in the MultiSearch, Calendar Year, and Period Performance Tools. See the "View" button on their output pages.
Added Compare Funds option to MultiSearch, which presents up to 10 funds from the MultiSearch Results table in a vertically oriented format.
Added printer-friendly pdf export option to all tools with vertically oriented output pages.
Added Returns vs Benchmark analysis options to MultiSearch tool.
Added option to run analysis tools from the output pages of other analysis tools.
Portfolio watchlists now found on MultiSearch page.
Expanded MultiSearch evaluation periods from 21 to 38, as described in November MFO commentary.
Batting averages, Ferguson metrics and Trend (versus 3- & 10-mo SMAs) all now available as MultiSearch screening criteria.
Added Trend analysis option to MultiSearch tool, which indicates when funds are above or below their 3- and 10-month simple moving averages (SMAs), as described in September MFO commentary.
Migrated to a new webhost to modernize our Account Manager and PayPal interface, as explained here.
Added Ferguson analysis option to MultiSearch tool, as described in August MFO commentary.
Added Calendar Year Performance and Period Performance analysis options to MultiSearch tool, including Returns, Returns vs Peers, Batting Averages, Category Averages, Peer Count, and Rank.
Site now using Lipper Global Data Feed, which will serve as basis for much expanded content.
Added Upside Capture, Downside Capture, and Capture Ratio across all 38 evaluation periods and versus SP500, USBond, US6040, and ACIxUS indexes.
Added header labels to column groups in MultiSearch results table. These labels can be toggled to show only columns (metrics) in selected group.
Added "Group" and "Column" visibility options on MultiSearch results page, which enable showing or hiding various metrics by group (e.g., "Period Metrics") or individually.
Redesigned Blog page using WordPress to better match format and features of our main site.
Adopted encrypted link HTTPS protocols along with our SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) site certificate to best safeguard subscriber information.
Added new Watchlist feature, enabling users to save up to 10 Watchlists of 25 Symbols from MultiSearch.
Added header definition pop-ups on hover in MultiSearch screener and re-enabled column reorder feature.
Added "Just Turned Three" and "Two Year Olds" to MultiSearch Age selection criteria.
Added Fund of Funds flag to MultiSearch screener.
Added beta and four correlation "R" metrics to MultiSearch output, including R vs Peer, R vs SP500, R vs USBond, and R vs ACIxUS.
Added a reference fund to each Category representing the Average of Monthly Returns. It will appear with all other funds when performing a MultiSearch screening by Category, identified with an "AV-" Symbol preface.
Added Life display option to Correlate tool, which will use period of youngest fund in matrix.
Added a Rolling Averages tool, which can be performed on all funds displayed in MuliSearch results table, as well as screened in MultiSearch itself.
Hyperlinked Category metric in MultiSearch tool, which enables comparison of all funds in a specific category with a single click. Other hyperlinks in MultiSearch are Symbol and Fund Family.
Updated Fund Names to eliminate Trust prefix and abbreviate Share Class, as applicable.
Added risk and performance metrics for nearly 2000 indexes. See Indexes on Category selection of MultiSearch page.
Revised Great Owl methodology to exclude funds under 20 years old that have an MFO Rating for its lifetime of less than 5.
Removed load from MFO ratings methodology following Morningstar's lead, citing "approximately half of A share class investors don't pay the full load."
Added vertical scrollbar to MultiSearch Results page, allowing headers to remain on screen when viewing large tables. The vertical scroll window will dynamically span about 2/3 of the browser window when viewing with relatively modern browsers.
Redesigned action buttons, like Correlate, on MultiSearch Results page, as well as enabled simultaneous execution of MultiSearch from multiple browser windows.
A Correlation Matrix can now be performed for up to 12 funds across seven evaluation periods. Just click "Correlate" within the Analyze tool of the MultiSearch Results page.

How to subscribe?

Premium MFO membership is $120 per year ($85 is tax-deductible to the extent allowable under law).

Create an account by clicking on LOGIN tab above. Access is granted automatically after email verification and PayPal portal payment. Writing a check also works. Drop us an email (david@mutualfundobserver.com) when the check is in the mail and we will access you pronto.

Current subscribers can extend or renew subscriptions any time via ACCOUNT tab. All subscriptions are non-recurring (we don't believe in auto-renewal).