Morningstar Investor Return

Morningstar® Investor Return™ captures how the average investor fared in a fund over a period of time. It estimates the return earned collectively by all the investors in a fund. Investor return, also known as dollar-weighted return, accounts for all cash inflows and outflows from purchases and sales and the growth in fund assets. It complements the more traditional metric of total return, which measures what investors could have earned had they bought and held the fund, reinvesting all dividends, over a period of time.

Investor return is an internal rate of return calculation that places greater emphasis on periods in which fund assets are larger. Morningstar now calculates one-, three-, five-, and 10-year trailing and annual investor returns for open-end mutual funds based in the United States.

To access Morningstar Investor Returns:

  1. In the left-hand navigation pane, click Research. The Research area opens.

  2. In the left-hand column, click Open End Funds. The Open End Funds area opens.

  3. Double-click United States Mutual Funds to open the universe. The mutual fund universe opens.

  4. Click the View arrow and select Returns (Month-end) or Returns (Quarter-end). Scroll all the way to the right. Investor returns are located at the far right of the screen.