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Morningstar Inc. (Morningstar.com) was founded in 1984 by Joe Mansueto. Morningstar is a provider of independent investment research for stocks, mutual funds, variable annuities, closed-end funds, exchange-traded funds, separate accounts, hedge funds, and 529 college savings plans. They offer an extensive line of Internet, software, and print-based products for individual investors, financial advisors, and institutional clients.

Morningstar offers investment consulting and retirement planning services through Morningstar Associates LLC, a registered investment advisor and wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar Inc. They also offer Morningstar® Managed Portfolios^sm, an asset management service for financial advisors, through Morningstar Investment Services Inc., a registered investment advisor, broker-dealer, and a subsidiary of Morningstar Inc.

Individuals use Morningstar to make educated investment decisions. These investors want all the pertinent facts, as well as the assurance that their information source is completely independent. The primary tool for investors is Morningstar.com®.

Financial advisors and other investment professionals turn to Morningstar for tools that help them research, analyze, present, and support their investment ideas. The main tools for advisors are Morningstar® Advisor Workstation^sm, a comprehensive, Web-based investment planning system, and Principia®, a CD-ROM-based investment research product. They also offer an asset management service, Morningstar® Managed Portfolios^sm, exclusively through financial advisors to help professionals construct investment portfolios for their clients.

Institutions, including mutual fund companies, retirement plan providers, media firms, banks, insurance companies, brokerage firms, and others, value independence, breadth of information, and customized services. The key institutional products are Morningstar® Licensed Data, a complete and robust set of investment data, and Morningstar Direct^sm (formerly Morningstar® DataLab®), a set of Web-based research tools that combines advanced performance and holdings-based analysis with access to Morningstar’s proprietary statistics.

For the retirement market, Morningstar® Retirement Manager^sm is a broad-based set of retirement planning services. Participants have access to  retirement advice and guidance services through 65,000 plan sponsors and 29 plan providers.

Morningstar U.S.A.
225 West Wacker Drive
Chicago, IL 60606
(312) 696-6600 (data questions only)

The above description was assembled using information from the publisher's site. All registered or unregistered trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners, and no trademark rights to the same are claimed.

There are quite a variety of investment newsletter services available to investors today, which achieve a decent track record. In reality, however, many newsletters have not translated well for most investors that subscribe to them. The reason? Money management. Without the proper position sizing using the right money management tool, you are only dealing with half the formula for success.

Let's face it: if there was one consistently successful investment newsletter, then the word would spread rapidly, and that one investment newsletter would have more customers than the population of China. The reality is that there has never been such a success. Why? Because in the final analysis, 8 out of 10 investors fail due to one simple reason: position sizing.

The majority of investors who subscribe to investment newsletters think that the process is as simple as "Just give me your recommendations and let me become as successful as you are". Unfortunately, as money managers know, entry points account for very little in the overall success of a portfolio. Find out why!