There are three experts that I routinely visit each time I am making an investment decision. This includes buy, hold and sell decisions. The three “experts” are Weiss Ratings, Fidelity Investments and, for ETF’s, XTF.com. XTF research can be seen in the Fidelity Investments “News & Research” mentioned in last week’s Thursday blog. Another good free tool is ETF.com.

A quick way to get several opinions is to use Fidelity’s ETF research. There is a similar tool if you are evaluating individual stocks, but I prefer Weiss for stocks and XTF.com for ETFs.

For ETF’s, log onto Fidelity Investments and select “News & Research” at the top center of the page and then “ETFs”

In the “Enter name or symbol” box enter the ETF. In this case, I used SCHD. I selected “Compare” and then you can change the view from “Basic Facts & Performance” to see “Analyst Ratings.”

You can now click on “Show similar ETPs” to get Fidelity’s suggested comparison ETFs, or you can individually enter the tickers you want to review. I entered VYM, ITOT, VOO and FDVV in my example.

XTF ratings are a good guide for ETF purchases

What is a “good” XTF rating? Well, that is open for some interpretation. I like to see an XTF rating of 9.0-10.0. As you can see in my illustration, both SCHD and VYM have ratings in that range: 9.7 and 9.9.

Weiss Ratings LINK:      https://investorresources.weissratings.com/