Research Firm: Investars

About the Firm

Investars is dedicated to helping investors enhance investment performance through state-of the-art tools designed for detailed performance evaluation and proper compensation of research services. Our clients benefit from customized analytics designed to help them identify alpha generating investment ideas according to their own investment style and risk tolerance levels and determine which research providers are best for them. Investars, founded in 1999 and incorporated as Netologic Inc., has offices in the United States and Europe. The firm has been referred to by major media organizations around the globe such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, CNBC, Bloomberg, CNN, Institutional Investor, and BusinessWeek, as well as the United States Congress and other regulatory organizations.

Methodology

Investars aggregates the research recommendations of equity research providers, and standardizes their different ratings scales for ease of comparison. The performance of the research providers can be measured to most accurately reflect a client's investment mandate with client-defined criteria, benchmarks and customizable performance algorithms. It is important to note that the performance of research can be calculated in different ways. For Fidelity clients, Investars offers its simple intuitive Smartindex. To create these Smartindices, Investars converts research providers’ buy/sell/hold ratings into a simple equal-weighted index whose return can be used as a guide by investors wishing to assess the historical performance of a particular research provider relative to its peers.

Coverage

Investars tracks the performance of over 200 equity research firms with recommendations on more than 30,000 securities in the U.S., Europe and Asia.

What's Provided on Fidelity.com

• Standardized research firm recommendations for Analyst Opinions
• Research firm recommendations for Upgrades/Downgrades
• Daily Sector-based performance by research firm provided on the interactive Firm Sector Performance Scorecard.
• Performance data and risk metrics for Integrity Research’s quarterly Firm Performance Analysis