Gosling's Grouse: Why ratings agencies shouldn't decide 'fair price' for multi-manager funds

Market should make the choice

A couple of weeks ago, Morningstar lowered the rating on one of the industry's leading multi-manager funds, at the same time as upgrading another fund from the same group of managers.

Nothing unusual there, you might say, as that is part of Morningstar's role in the market, along with all the other fund research/ratings agencies. But did Morningstar remove the rating for performance or process reasons? No, it decided to do so on the basis of cost. How does your multi-asset fund compare? Rise of passives increases pricing pressure It decided the fund, led by the BMO team of Gary Potter and Robert Burdett, was too expensive, or perhaps more accurately, it was more expensive than the average comparable fund. Fair to say one of the managers, Gary Potter, blew the...