In current times where the market is experiencing heavy doses of volatility, quality screening via trusted research is a must and today, investment management firm VanEck announced it’s launching two new ETFs that leverage research from Morningstar’s experienced equity research team–the VanEck Vectors Morningstar Durable Dividend ETF (DURA) and VanEck Vectors Morningstar Global Wide Moat ETF (GOAT).
DURA seeks to provide exposure to high dividend yielding U.S. companies with strong financial health and attractive valuations, according to Morningstar. DURA seeks to replicate as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Morningstar® US Dividend Valuation IndexSM. The Index leverages Morningstar’s forward-looking fair value assessments as well as its proprietary quantitative Distance to Default score, which helps target financially strong companies with a higher probability of sustaining dividend payments.
“Traditional methods of screening dividend paying companies generally rely on backward-looking data, such as a company’s history or magnitude of past distributions,” said Ed Lopez, Head of ETF Product with VanEck. “Key features of DURA’s index are Morningstar’s fair value and financial health assessments. After years of very low interest rates and ongoing demand for dividend paying stocks, an important consideration for investors is making sure not to overpay for yield, and the Distance to Default metric helps select companies with the lowest probability of future dividend cuts.”
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GOAT seeks to provide exposure to global companies with sustainable competitive advantages, or “wide moats,” that are attractively priced according to Morningstar’s estimate of fair value. GOAT seeks to replicate as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Morningstar® Global Wide Moat Focus IndexSM.
“Morningstar’s equity research team consists of over 100 analysts globally and applies one consistent, forward-looking methodology to their stock analysis,” added Lopez.