The Brinsmere Fund - Conservative ETF's Average People Pillar and Process Pillar ratings result in a Morningstar Medalist Rating of Neutral. The portfolio maintains a sizable cost advantage over competitors, priced within the cheapest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy’s management team earns an Average People Pillar rating. The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following the pillar section for more details. The strategy merits an Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained an underweight position in the Europe-Developed region and has an overweight in the real estate sector compared with category peers. The strategy's parent organization is industry standard, albeit with some strong attributes like low portfolio manager turnover, but is held back by relatively short-tenured portfolio managers. This earns the firm an Average Parent Pillar rating.

Analyst Rating

Vanguard Short-Term Treasury ETF

Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF

Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF

Vanguard Growth ETF

Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF

Vanguard Value ETF

Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond ETF

Vanguard Small-Cap ETF

Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF

iShares TIPS Bond ETF

Morningstar's evaluation of this fund's process aims to determine how repeatable, consistent, and reliable it is, and whether management maintains a competitive advantage. The Brinsmere Fund - Conservative ETF earns an Average Process Pillar rating. The largest contributor to the rating is the firm's five-year retention rate of 100% over the period. The size of the portfolio management team also bolsters the rating. With four portfolio managers, the fund is reasonably well-resourced. Lastly, the process is limited by being an actively managed strategy. Historical data, such as Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that actively managed funds have generally underperformed their passive counterparts, especially over longer time horizons.

This strategy maintains an equity allocation that hews closely to the typical Tactical Allocation peer but holds more assets in fixed income, with a 43% to 52% equity to fixed-income composition. Its equity sleeve has a consistent bias toward both smaller market-cap and growth-oriented companies versus the category average. The strategy has three region or sector biases compared to category peers. The most meaningful is its consistent underweight in the Developed Europe region. It also routinely positions more assets in the real estate sector. And finally, in the fund's most recent portfolio, more assets were allocated to developed markets regions. Although, this bias has not existed over time. 

 The portfolio is overweight in real estate by 4.3 percentage points in terms of assets compared with the category average, and its technology allocation is similar to the category. The sectors with low exposure compared to category peers are energy and industrials; however, the allocations are similar to the category. The portfolio is overweight in North America by 11.0 percentage points compared with the category average, and Middle East and Africa's allocation is similar to its peers. The regions with low exposure compared to their category peers are Developed Europe and United Kingdom, with Developed Europe underweight the average by 5.3 percentage points and United Kingdom similar to the average.

 The fund’s bond sleeve takes on more interest rate risk as its average duration is 4.6 years compared with the category average of 4.1 years.

Average

Process

The Brinsmere Fund - Conservative ETF earns an Average People Pillar rating. The team is backed by Dustin Lewellyn, the longest-tenured manager on the strategy, who brings 14 years of listed portfolio management experience. The strategies they currently manage have an average Morningstar Rating of 2.2 stars, demonstrating disappointing risk-adjusted performance compared with category peers. Dustin Lewellyn has an adequate backdrop of support, drawing on three additional listed managers, averaging eight years of listed portfolio management experience. As a team, they manage two investment vehicles together, with mixed prospects. The asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating across the strategies is Neutral. This means, in aggregate, they are not positioned to deliver positive alpha. None of the portfolio managers here invest in this fund. This hurts the rating because manager investment would align their interests with the strategy's investors. 

 Note: The People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. The longest-tenured manager of the fund also manages a different product rated by an analyst. Their analyst-assigned People Pillar rating is combined here with the People scores (algorithmic or analyst-assigned) for the fund’s other managers on a tenure-weighted basis.

People

Despite a short track record as a firm of only two months, The Brinsmere Funds has exhibited a handful of strong qualities, earning it an Average Parent Pillar rating. The firm currently manages two vehicles across a team of four strategy managers.  The firm's earliest portfolio manager hire, Dustin Lewellyn, has 14 years of industry experience and has demonstrated skill at the helm of other strategies, which is reassuring. 
 
   

 As The Brinsmere Funds builds and continues to develop a track record, its rating will be adjusted accordingly.

Parent

The Brinsmere Fund - Conservative ETF

TBFC is an actively managed fund of funds with exposure to the global equity and bond markets. It uses two proprietary investment strategies to create a conservative portfolio.

The Brinsmere Fund - Growth ETF

The Milwaukee Company has issued two actively managed fund of funds that systematically adjust their asset allocations to enhance return and reduce risk. The Brinsmere Fund – Growth ETF (NYSE Arca: TBFG) and the Brinsmere Fund – Conservative ETF (NYSE Arca: TBFC) trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

News for The Brinsmere Fund - Conservative ETF ETF (TBFC)