Fido's ETF Page

I was reading Barry Ritholtz' Apprenticed Investor column, you are reading these right?

Anywho (intentional misspelling) there was an add for Fidelity's ETF portfolio builder and research offering so I clicked through to check it out. A few months ago I wrote about a similar offering from Ameritrade called Amerivest.

I have not revisited the Amerivest page to see how or if it has evolved. Fidelity's portfolio builder allows you to choose from one of seven predetermined portfolios based on style, cap size or sector. The default allocation for each of the seven portfolios mirrors the SPX very closely. You can tweak any of the seven to overweight or underweight any part of the grouping that you want. For example if you choose one of the two sector portfolios you could reduce the weight in financials and add the difference to energy and healthcare.

You can also create your own portfolio with up to ten ETFs. The page will give you an in-depth analysis of your grouping, as it does for its preselected seven, that is similar to Morningstar's X-Ray product. It does not cover every ETF in existence but it is able to analyze over 150 ETFs.
Foreign ETFs were completely missing from the preselected group of seven which was surprising because Fido manages plenty of foreign OEFs, go figure?

Fido also offers a research page on every ETF that was very disappointing. A lot of the information could be found at iShares.com, ETFconnect, Morningstar or YahooFinance. There was a Risk section (chance to differentiate) that was non-ETF specific boilerplate. Fidelity has a fantastic research department. They can't have a handful of junior analysts write a specific risk profile on of them? It sounds like something that could be cranked out in a couple of days. Then maybe have one or two people follow for any big changes? Maybe its just me but I think this could be a big draw for new clients for the firm; real analysis.

Negatives aside, this is a step down the road of what I have been writing about which is innovative new products helping investors empower themselves.

If I have a chance I will revisit Amerivest to see if anything is new.

I will close this out with a familiar refrain, ETFs are fine products but they are not the be all end all for every portfolio. You can have a mix of different products. In our personal accounts we have 18 or 19 holdings. Three are ETFs, three bond CEFs (I think of MCN as more of a bond holding than equity) and the rest are individual stocks. At anytime it might makes sense to use more or less ETFs. Why limit yourself?