The Analyst Rating for funds (including our Medalist ratings) reflects a Morningstar analyst's qualitative evaluation of a fund's prospects.
- Keeping costs low is paramount for index funds. Our top-rated ETFs are among the lowest-cost active and index funds in their categories.
- We also carefully analyze an ETF's underlying benchmark (the index it tracks) to understand how the portfolio is built and maintained.
- We reserve our Morningstar Medalist ratings for those low-cost ETFs that we think will tightly track a sensibly constructed index. These attributes are likeliest to translate to better performance over the long run.