August 18, 2015
DFA receiving recognition from Morningstar
Morningstar is the leading company for evaluating mutual funds. They recently issued a new "Stewardship Grade" for Dimensional Funds (DFA) giving DFA an 'A' (which is the highest rating on a scale from 'A' to 'F').
Morningstar's Stewardship Grade assesses:
1. The manner in which DFA's funds are run,
2. The degree to which DFA's management team's and Board of Directors' interests are aligned with its fund investors, and
3. The degree to which fund investors can expect their interests to be protected from potentially conflicting interests of DFA's.
Below is an article prepared by Morningstar explaining how DFA's firm structure and corporate culture factor into this Stewardship Grade. We thought you might find this interesting, as Morningstar's analysis confirms our perspective of DFA as a firm that's doing right by our clients.
(One side comment - on page 2, the article refers to DFA's "dollar-weighted investor returns" being "generally subpar to its time-weighted total returns". Dollar-weighted returns attempt to measure how an actual investor would have fared in a mutual fund versus how a fund performed on an absolute basis. Morningstar has an internal methodology for this calculation and there are inherent limitations in such a calculation. We think investors are better suited to reflect on their own actual results vs. Morningstar's estimate of what these results might be.)
Thank you, and we hope you enjoy the rest of the Summer!
Please click on the link below for the article:
Morningstar giving Dimensional Funds an 'A' Stewardship Grade