As the individual investor product owner, my team and I are dedicated to guiding and supporting Australians whenever they are making decisions about investing.

I am responsible for our premium subscription service to Morningstar research (including the Your Money Weekly newsletter) and www.morningstar.com.au.

Each month, I will be sharing a quick overview of things you may have missed at Morningstar.

Morningstar Individual Investor Conference

Our sixth annual individual investor conference took place in Sydney on 6 October. We had a great turnout with over 600 individual investors in attendance and an interesting line-up of speakers that included Peter Warnes, Ian Narev, and Hamish Douglass.

Personally, I thought the session run by our equity research team was one of the best of the day and highly relevant for individual investors.

Adam Fleck, our director of equity research in Australia and New Zealand, moderated a panel that included David Ellis, who covers banking, Chris Kallos, who covers healthcare, and Brian Han, who covers telecoms.

I think the panel discussion demonstrated the depth of industry knowledge that our analysts bring to the equity research available to our subscribers.

As a special bonus, we have made the video of that session available for Morningstar.com.au readers.

Economic moats in Your Money Weekly

Over the course of the month, Peter Warnes has run a series of articles examining the sources of economic moats in our weekly newsletter for Premium subscribers, Your Money Weekly.

Economic moats form a key component in the Morningstar Equity Research methodology. At Morningstar, we believe a great business is one that has a long-term competitive advantage which allows it to fend off competitors while investing capital at a high rate of return. The long-term competitive advantage of a business is called an economic moat.

For premium subscribers or trialists, the first of Peter's five articles on the sources of economic moats ran in the 12 October edition of Your Money Weekly, with the last article scheduled to be published in the 9 November edition.

Premium subscribers and trialists can find the Your Money Weekly archive here.

The Investment Series

The Investment Series is a Nine Network show which follows former Neighbours star Blair McDonough's journey to understand the financial services industry, and his investment options as he discovers why he needs to reinvent his sources of income.

The former CEO of Morningstar Australasia appears in several of the episodes and we have created a companion Morningstar Guide.

The guide will follow the investment topics that are covered on each episode of The Investment Series and provide Morningstar research on the featured managed funds. The companion guide can be found here.

For more information about the show please go to the website. 

New contributors to Morningstar.com.au

We have introduced two new regular contributors to our website. The first is Vanessa Stoykov, the founder of evolution media, which produces The Investment Series.

Vanessa is dedicated to helping Australians take charge of their financial future. We believe her writing fits in well with Morningstar's mission to help people plan, save, and invest to reach their financial goals. Her first article can be found here.

The second of our new contributors is Brian Kennaugh, the CEO of Hunter Financial Planning, a financial planning company based in Belmont NSW. Brian will be contributing a monthly piece with his first article available here.

Invest Like the Best

While not directly related to Morningstar, I did want to mention a podcast that a friend recently recommended. The Invest Like the Best podcast by Patrick O'Shaughnessy is an exploration of interesting topics related to investing and features interviews with key members of the financial industry.

I may be biased, but I found the interview with Morningstar founder Joe Mansueto particularly interesting. Featured in podcast number 41, Joe discusses the founding of Morningstar and many of the values that continue to define our company today.

The Invest Like the Best podcasts are free and can be downloaded through iTunes.

Morningstar Next

During October, we launched Morningstar Next. Morningstar Next builds on the leading research, data, and tools you enjoy from Morningstar, offering three ready-made portfolios. You simply pick one that suits your goals and timeframe, decide how much to invest, and we do the rest.

Each portfolio is thoroughly diversified, offering a careful blend of cash, direct shares, exchange-traded funds, and managed funds from around the world. They represent a simple and effective way to add diversification to your overall portfolio.

More information can be found on the dedicated Morningstar Next website.

Finally, I would love to hear from any subscribers or readers about what we can do to continue to help you make better financial decisions.

We have some exciting improvements planned for 2018 including a new website, a dedicated portfolio construction section with tools and guides to help with asset allocation decisions, new stock and fund screeners, and additional educational content.

Please write me at [email protected] with any feedback.

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• Make better investment decisions with Morningstar Premium | Free 4-week trial

 

Mark Lamonica is a product manager, Individual Investor, Australia.

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