S&P has high hopes for MarketScope Advisor

Standard & Poor’s MarketScope Advisor is a beautifully designed, intuitive online application that is meant to serve as a financial adviser’s central source of real-time stock analysis, equity research, strategic asset allocation guidance and market commentary.

Many independent advisers, especially those who don’t do their own equity research or stock-picking, may find the $2,000-a-year subscription pricey, however.

“We’ve just never seen the need to pay for research. When we need to look at a stock, our first source is Yahoo! Finance, which provides a ton of information,” said Jim Starcev, a registered investment adviser and managing principal of Etelligent Consulting Inc. in Overland Park, Kan.

The firm manages $25 billion in assets and also sells portfolio management software to more than 150 advisory firms.

When he needs research, Mr. Starcev relies on what is available from his custodian, Schwab Institutional of San Francisco.

Available since the end of October, the tool will eventually replace Advisor Insight Web, which is still being offered by S&P, a New York-based unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., also of New York, and one of the largest providers of independent equity research.

Depth of information is what distinguishes S&P’s offering from free sites and from premium-priced competitors, said Ken Hoffman, senior director of platform management and development in the company’s equity research division.

“On the free sites you see lots of content but not a lot of deep analyst analysis,” he said. “For example, not many sites will show you what green stocks and [exchange traded funds] to invest in.”

With the S&P product, advisers can navigate among six different modules that can be displayed all at once on a single screen. Because the modules have been built using web technologies such as JAVA, they are self-contained; their individual interfaces can be dragged around the screen and placed anywhere the adviser wishes at any given moment.

Nothing is locked down — by design.

The first two modules, “MarketView” and “MarketScan,” are intended as at-a-glance updates on stocks. They include S&P’s STARS ranking upgrades and downgrades, trading activity, merger talk, stock splits and S&P’s asset allocation recommendations and global outlook, as well as market statistics, commentary and breaking news.

Another, more sophisticated feature, “Trendscope,” provides thematic analysis of recent and emerging trends in various market sectors, including health care, energy, lifestyle, green investing and emerging markets.

Other features are intended to help advisers keep their clients better informed. These include a calendar for tracking market-moving events, such as government data announcements and initial public offerings, updates on analysts’ equity ratings and a section in which advisers can create client portfolios and monitor their performance, as well as letting them monitor S&P’s own suite of model portfolios.

The new site and service is a response to the challenging market environment and greater competition, Mr. Hoffman said.

“We took a look at our content mix about a year and a half ago and asked ourselves how we could better package our proprietary information,” he said, adding that the look and feel of the new design is intended to appeal to users of popular consumer portals such as My Yahoo! and iGoogle.

“With [MarketAdvisor] we’re presenting a whole 360-degree picture of the market, including more than 5,000 stock reports, a number that none of our competitors from the independent side can match in breadth or depth,” Mr. Hoffman said.

Tyler Price, a private-client specialist at Great Falls, Mont.-based D.A. Davidson & Co. in charge of providing outside research to advisers, said that his firm replaced an equity research offering from Zurich, Switzerland-based Credit Suisse Group with MarketScope Advisor in order to access additional data and research and cut costs. Mr. Price, a former broker, said that 125 professionals at his firm use the Advisor service.

The firm manages $22.4 billion in assets.

“Right now the most popular of the modules is the rankings sections, because of its flexibility in terms of filtering,” Mr. Price said. “Marketview is also popular, because of the news and expert commentary.”

He added that the portfolios module was being adopted quickly.

The tool allows advisers to import portfolio data easily and show clients how their portfolios have performed.

Davis Janowski can be reached at [email protected].