ETF information, please

Research firms battle to be the place to go for investors looking to learn more about exchange-traded funds

Exchange-traded funds have been one of the fastest-growing corners of the fund business, grabbing roughly $1 for every $2 that flowed into conventional long-term mutual funds in 2010. But it's not just fund companies that are sniffing opportunity.

Media and research firms from Standard & Poor's to IndexUniverse are competing to be the chief supplier of information to ETF investors, much the way Chicago-based Morningstar won over mutual-fund investors a generation ago. Amid the scramble, competitors including Morningstar itself have launched a slew of online tools, many of them free, such as rankings and search engines that help compare the hundreds of ETFs available.

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The Worst Performer in Billionaires’ Portfolios? Trophy Art.External link

The Worst Performer in Billionaires’ Portfolios? Trophy Art.