The new web-based fund reports, available for free on www.standardandpoors.com, feature fund analyst commentary from Standard & Poor’s—a leading provider of independent investment research, ratings and indices—on over 230 Standard & Poor’s rated, SEC registered money market and bond funds.
The redesigned fund reports highlight the credit quality, management, and portfolio specifics of each fund rated by Standard & Poor’s fund analysts. Each report includes informative graphs and tables representing a fund’s credit quality, portfolio composition, maturity, yield and performance along with the analytical rationale for each rating. Modern portfolio theory statistics such as the fund’s Beta, Alpha, Sharpe Ratio, and Standard Deviation are also included in the report. In addition, the new bond fund reports also prominently feature Standard & Poor’s volatility rating—a qualitative evaluation of a fund’s sensitivity to interest rate movement, credit risk, investment diversification or concentration, liquidity and leverage.
“Standard & Poor’s remains committed to providing timely and value added information on its fund ratings, and the new Web-based reports are an extension of that,” adds Peter Rizzo, Director of funds research at Standard & Poor’s. “Investors and clients rely on Standard & Poor’s fund ratings to help gauge the risks inherent in a money market and fixed income fund. The redesigned, qualitatively driven reports will provide for easier access to our fund ratings while offering a superior level of detail.”
Standard & Poor’s redesigned money market and fixed income fund reports can be found by accessing www.standardandpoors.com, and then clicking on “Funds” in the main tab above.
Standard & Poor’s assigns credit quality and volatility ratings to bond funds, money market funds and other managed pools of ‘fixed income’ assets. A money market fund rating is a safety rating, expressing Standard & Poor’s opinion of the ability of a fund to maintain principal value and limit exposure to loss. Money market fund ratings can range from ‘AAAm’ to ‘Dm’, with the ‘m’ denoting a money market fund. The credit quality rating assigned to a bond fund addresses the level of protection its portfolio holdings provide against losses from credit defaults. Credit quality ratings range from ‘AAAf’ (highest level of protection) to ‘CCCf’ (least protection). Volatility ratings offer a current opinion of fund’s sensitivity to changing market conditions and can range from ‘S1’ (lowest volatility) to ‘S6’ (highest volatility). The ‘m’ and ‘f’ symbols distinguish the fund ratings from a Standard & Poor’s traditional debt rating, which usually are not subscripted and which indicates a borrower’s ability to repay principal and interest on a timely basis.
