Hedge Fund 411

Advisors have for years had access to a great deal of data on stocks, mutual funds, closed-end funds, ETFs and even certain bonds, but for alternative investments like hedge funds, or for managed accounts information has been harder to come by. For advisors who have been frustrated by this, there is good news from Chicago-based Morningstar, with the announcement July 17th that they will buy a division of InvestorForce, Inc., that includes its institutional hedge fund and separate account database.

Morningstar will almost double the number of hedge funds in its database to about 6,000 with the integration of the Wayne, Pennsylvania-based InvestorForce’s Altvest database, and add about 1,500 separate accounts to the 4,500 it already covers, bringing that number to about 6,000 as well.

“Over the next few weeks, we’ll be adding the hedge fund information to Morningstar’s Advisor Workstation Office Edition,” for individual advisors, says Ryan Tagal, director of hedge funds for Morningstar, while separate account information has been available there for about a year he said.