A sound investment process and strong management team underpin iShares US Financials ETF's Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the cheapest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's sensible investment philosophy merits a High Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained an overweight in quality exposure and an underweight in volatility exposure compared with category peers. High quality exposure is attributed to stocks with low financial leverage and strong returns on equity. And low volatility exposure is rooted in stocks that have a lower standard deviation of returns. The strategy’s management team earns an Above Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Above Average Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

Analyst Rating

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. - Ordinary Shares - Class B

JPMorgan Chase & Co

Bank of America

Wells Fargo

Goldman Sachs

S&P Global

Progressive

Citigroup

BlackRock

Charles Schwab

Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category index on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. iShares US Financials ETF earns a High Process Pillar rating. The most important driver of the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, like Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that passively managed funds have generally outperformed their active counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. Excellent risk-adjusted performance also influences the rating. This can be seen in the fund's five-year alpha calculated relative to the category average, which suggests that the process was successful over that period. The firm's five-year retention rate of 92% supports the rating as well.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is:  The investment seeks to track the investment results of the Russell 1000 Financials 40 Act 15/22.5 Daily Capped Index composed of U.S. equities in the financial sector.  The fund generally will invest at least 80% of its assets in the component securities of its underlying index and in investments that have economic characteristics that are substantially identical to the component securities of its underlying index. The underlying index measures the performance of the financials sector of the U.S. equity market. 

 The portfolio is overweight in financial services by 15.1 percentage points in terms of assets compared with the category average, and its real estate allocation is similar to the category. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are technology and consumer cyclical, with technology underweighting the average portfolio by 5.2 percentage points of assets and consumer cyclical similar to the average. The portfolio has 142 holdings and is similarly diversified as peers, with 46.7% of portfolio assets concentrated within the top 10 holdings. And in closing, in terms of portfolio turnover, looking at year-over-year movements, 14% of the fund's holdings have changed, whether through increasing, decreasing, or changing a position.

High

Process

iShares’s equity team is strong compared with others in the industry, resulting in an Above Average People Pillar rating. There are three managers listed on the fund: Paul Whitehead, Jennifer Hsui, Greg Savage. Experience on the team is abundant, with 18 years of average portfolio management experience. Together, they manage a total of 257 strategies, with a Silver asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, indicating the potential to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate.  

 Note: This People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. Morningstar analysts evaluate the People Pillar for passive products at the brand level and may also differentiate by asset class. There is at least one other passive strategy at the firm that is covered by a Morningstar analyst, so the People Pillar rating of the fund is inherited from the rating that the Morningstar analyst assigned to investment vehicles under the same brand name.

Above Average

People

BlackRock offers compelling options across asset classes and vehicles. It earns an Above Average rating for Parent. 
The firm’s approximately USD 8 trillion in assets under management, as of Sept. 30, 2022, gives it unparalleled scale and influence. It is a market-leading index fund provider globally, and its iShares exchange-traded fund franchise offers a low-cost lineup of core funds that investors can use to build a well-diversified portfolio for dirt cheap. The firm can be more adventurous in its ETF launches than some peers, so not everything it launches is appropriate for the masses. As a result, it is likely to have more ETF closures than peers that stick to the basic building blocks.  
The firm’s active fixed-income and multi-asset efforts also stand out as some of the best in the industry. Those benefit from BlackRock’s commitment to building a first-class risk management system via its Aladdin analytics software. The software is also available for sale to other firms and has proved to be a popular option for competitors, a testament to its usefulness. 
More recently, the firm has shifted its focus to ESG offerings and incorporating ESG across its investment lineup, leading to a political backlash in the United States.
BlackRock isn’t the best at everything it tries to do, but retail investors, financial advisors, and large institutions could all build robust portfolios using BlackRock’s products.

Parent

iShares U.S. Financials ETF

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