CHICAGO, Dec. 8, 2014 /CNW/ - Morningstar, Inc. (NASDAQ: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, has launched more than 60 new global equity indexes. Now, Morningstar's index family spans 45 countries in both developed and emerging markets. The new indexes provide investors with benchmarking tools that reflect the performance of equity markets worldwide and will serve as the foundation for the next generation of Morningstar "strategic beta" indexes. Morningstar's index business is part of the Morningstar Investment Management group.

"As more and more individual investors, advisors, and institutions take a global perspective to investing, our new index family will provide them with meaningful, consistent worldwide views across market capitalizations and regions to provide a deeper understanding of market behavior throughout the globe," Sanjay Arya, head of Morningstar Indexes, said.

Morningstar's new index family comprises global, regional, and country-specific indexes using a transparent, rules-based methodology with a focus on the investability of the underlying securities. The new index family can help investors with:

• Market monitoring—Comprehensive and non-overlapping, the indexes allow investors to analyze performance trends and market movements around the globe.
• Asset allocation—The global equity indexes reflect the risk and return profiles of each developed and emerging market country and can help investors build better model portfolios.
• Attribution analysis—Investors can use the indexes to perform attribution analysis to understand what drives a manager's or portfolio's performance.

Currently, the indexes are available with end-of-day returns and constituent data in Morningstar DirectSM, the firm's research platform for institutions. In the coming months, the company will add the indexes into Morningstar® Advisor WorkstationSM and Morningstar.com, investment platforms for advisors and individuals, respectively. Morningstar also plans to roll out real-time calculations early next year for the development of market monitoring tools and strategic beta indexes. Morningstar defines strategic beta indexes as those that seek to either improve performance or alter the level of risk relative to a standard benchmark. Click here for more information and a complete list of the new global equity indexes.

Introduced in 2002, the Morningstar Indexes include a broad range of traditional beta equity, fixed income, and commodity indexes that are also combined to form asset allocation index series. In addition, Morningstar Indexes offers a family of strategic beta indexes that draw on the equity, fund, and asset allocation research across the company. Currently, Morningstar has more than 280 indexes and approximately 40 exchange-traded products track Morningstar Indexes globally. For more information about all of Morningstar's indexes, visit http://indexes.morningstar.com.

About Morningstar, Inc.
Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers, and retirement plan providers and sponsors. Morningstar provides data on approximately 479,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles, along with real-time global market data on more than 13 million equities, indexes, futures, options, commodities, and precious metals, in addition to foreign exchange and Treasury markets. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries and had approximately $169 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Sept. 30, 2014. The company has operations in 27 countries.

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SOURCE Morningstar Research Inc.