The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) is dedicated to providing investors with the tools and resources they need to make informed financial decisions. A key component of this commitment is the FINRA Fund Analyzer, a powerful tool designed to evaluate and compare various investment funds. In the second quarter of 2021, FINRA rolled out several enhancements to the Fund Analyzer, significantly improving its functionality and user experience. This article explores these updates in detail, offering insights into how investors can leverage these new features to optimize their investment strategies.
The FINRA Fund Analyzer is a comprehensive tool that allows investors to analyze and compare mutual funds, ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds), and other investment products. It provides valuable insights into fund performance, costs, and other critical factors, helping investors make well-informed decisions.
Several significant updates were introduced to the FINRA Fund Analyzer in the second quarter of 2021, each designed to provide investors with more granular control and deeper insights into their fund analysis.
One of the most notable improvements is the "Duplicate" function. This feature enables users to analyze the same fund multiple times, each with different configurations. This is particularly useful for evaluating various scenarios and understanding how different factors impact fund performance.
Benefits:
The enhanced Fund Analyzer can now evaluate trades for traditional mutual fund share classes and transaction (or "clean") mutual fund shares, ETFs, ETNs and money market funds. Transaction shares encompass any share where a transaction generates a sales load or commission after the initial investment.
Key Features:
The Analyzer’s Advanced Options now support the evaluation of trades using prospectus-based or brokerage commission-based pricing.
Users can now toggle account aggregation on or off, a feature particularly useful for analyzing transaction shares that may not permit aggregation by default.
Benefits:
The Fund Analyzer now reflects the impact of ticket charges, which are flat fees applied to buy, sell, and/or exchange transactions. This enhancement provides a more accurate picture of the total cost of investing.
Key Features:
The fund search functionality has been refined to make it easier to select funds for "duplicate" analysis. This streamlined process saves time and reduces the likelihood of errors.
Benefits:
All aspects of the Fund Analyzer's fund analysis and reference information have been consolidated onto the results page. This integration eliminates the need to navigate separate pages, offering a more cohesive and efficient analysis experience.
Key Features:
The Analyzer now calculates account values for funds across a range of returns (-20% to 20%) and holding periods (1 to 20 years). This feature allows investors to assess the impact of changes in return or holding period on their funds.
Benefits:
For transaction shares, the Analyzer now calculates account values for various trading frequencies (annually to every 20 years) and holding periods (1 to 20 years). This helps investors understand how trading frequency impacts their returns.
Key Features:
The average annual returns section now includes "as-of" dates for each fund's 1, 3, 5, 10, and since-inception return data. This ensures that investors have the most current information available, typically updated monthly.
Benefits:
The print function has been redesigned to facilitate easy printing or saving analyses as PDFs. This improvement streamlines the process of documenting and sharing fund analyses.
Key Features:
The enhanced FINRA Fund Analyzer provides investors with a powerful suite of tools to make informed decisions. By understanding and utilizing these new features, investors can:
FINRA offers a wealth of additional resources to help investors protect and grow their assets. These include:
The enhancements to the FINRA Fund Analyzer represent a significant step forward in providing investors with the tools they need to navigate the complex world of investing. By leveraging these new features, investors can gain deeper insights into fund performance, costs, and potential outcomes, ultimately making more informed decisions that align with their financial goals. As FINRA continues to refine and improve its resources, investors can look forward to even greater transparency and control over their investment portfolios.
