Screening index mutual funds on-line with IndexUniverse.com
In this article, The Skilled Investor discusses how to screen index mutual funds on-line. This article focuses on using the free index mutual fund screener and database available at IndexUniverse.com.
We also discuss how to apply our seven scientifically based mutual fund screening criteria.
In a previous article, The Skilled Investor has discussed minimum requirements for using on-line screeners and fund databases to screen automatically the thousands of mutual funds and hundreds of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that are available. (See: On-line screening of mutual funds and ETFs: Minimum Requirements). That article concluded that free fund screeners and databases offered by Morningstar.com and IndexUniverse.com are sufficient to allow you to screen mutual funds, index mutual funds, and ETFs and to use our scientific fund selection criteria. Because we found adequate free screeners to implement our criteria, paying a subscription to any website to obtain functionality that is more advanced is not necessary.
Note that the focus of this article is on the screening of INDEX MUTUAL FUNDS on IndexUniverse.com. A future article will discuss ETF screening on both Morningstar.com and IndexUniverse.com. You may also wish to refer to our previously published article: Screening mutual funds on-line with Morningstar.com
Note also that there is no business arrangement of any kind between The Skilled Investor and Morningstar.com or IndexUniverse.com. These websites simply meet the requirements laid out in our article on minimum screening requirements.
A related article also discussed our seven scientifically derived fund screening criteria: 1) minimum management expenses, 2) minimum turnover, 3) zero sales charges, loads and marketing fees, 4) avoidance of very large funds with higher trading costs, 5) avoidance of immature funds, 6) a minimally sufficient asset base over which to spread required fund expenses, and 7) the exclusion only of funds with very poor historical performance records. (See: Scientific mutual fund and ETF screening criteria: a summary)
You can find IndexUniverse.com’s home page at http://www.indexuniverse.com/index.php For the free screener, click on “+DATA” in the left hand column. When this article was published in early February of 2007, the direct URL address was http://www.indexuniverse.com/data/
Data in the IndexUniverse.com fund screening database seems to be updated quarterly, which is recent enough for fund screening purposes. The index fund data available at IndexUniverse.com comes, in part, from Morningstar, Inc. Free registration with the IndexUniverse.com site is optional. Doing so will give you access to [...]