Morningstar said it had added mutual fund data to its QuoteSpeed service, which provides market data in real-time to corporate and individual investors.
The mutual fund rating firm said its market data service now includes close-of-day net asset values on 6,765 mutual funds, historical charting back to inception as well as Morningstar fund news.
The service also includes research data on exchange-traded and mutual funds, such as fees and expenses, ratings, portfolio summaries, tax analyses and return rundowns.
A user of QuoteSpeed can set up screen views of a mutual fund watchlist, performance charts and news. Among the charts are ones that show net asset values by day, year to date; "above and below" values, going back five years; and, what the worth of an original $10,000 at inception would be now, compared to a benchmark.
Mutual funds are now supported in charts, as well, by ticker symbol.
Predixion, Composite Provide Analytics in the Cloud
Predixion Software said it introduced a service that allows users of its self-service predictive analytics to connect to hundreds of data sources beyond those provided for use with Microsoft's PowerPivot calculation engine.
The Predixion service, which works online using computing resources "in the cloud," also leverages a high-performance query engine and multiple caching techniques from Composite Software to speed up queries and results.
The new data integration option called Predixion Enterprise Connexion is based on the Composite Data Virtualization Platform, allows Predixion Insight users to mine more data by extending connections of relational database sources, multidimensional sources, Web services, messaging services, procedural sources and business applications from SAP, Oracle and Salesforce.com.
For example, the companies said, marketing analysts at a mutual fund company could combine transactions involving customers with streams of users' Web clicks with e-mail marketing campaign results and information on investment activities. This would allow a mutual fund manager to uncover "hidden patterns" that could predict successful marketing campaigns.
DTCC Enhances Web Service for Fund Profiles
The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. last week introduced to its Mutual Fund Profile Service to improve the value of the data and expand the service's technological capabilities.
The improvements make it easier for users to enter and maintain fund information through upgraded web pages. The entry page, for instance, now includes a data dictionary function that provides definitions and examples for the 250 data points in the database.
Also, instead of asking users to input the data twice in the profile application, the information is automatically populated.
DTCC completed the enhancements with the help of Delta Data Software and the Investment Company Institute's Profile Steering Committee.
"Today, Profile delivers the most accurate and cost-effective source of fund information, and we applaud the DTCC and all those who participated in its transformation," said Delta Data Chief Executive Officer Don Beck.
To date, approximately 19,000 people from 140 fund companies and broker-dealers have used the system.
Online Service To Test Advisors' Recommendations
A New York financial technology firm is planning to introduce an online service that includes fees in its calculations of returns on exchange-traded funds and compares the performance of funds recommended by an advisor to the returns of an alternative portfolio of funds.
The company, Optimize, plans to introduce a service called Online Investment advice that it claims will help investors evaluate an investment advisor.
The service will show investors "how much their portfolio is losing to management fees every year as a result of their recommendations and how much they are under-performing in annual returns relative to an alternative ETF portfolio,'' according to Matthew J. McGrath, its president and CEO.
The company claims it has two patents pending. One covers instant online analysis of investments and monitoring of portfolios, according to its website.
Servers Still Not Virtualized: Gartner
More than 80% of enterprises now have a virtualization program or project in place. But only 25% of all server workloads will be in a virtual machine by the end of this year, according to technology research firm Gartner Inc.
Gartner estimates that approximately 90% of the server market is composed of x86 architecture servers. But, based on a traditional model of one application per server, roughly 80% to 90% of the x86 computing capacity is unused at any time, the research firm said.
