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Monarch gives you several ways to classify and view your funds, powered by data from Morningstar, a leading investment research company. Each classification scheme groups your ETFs and Mutual Funds through a different lens, from broad asset types down to a fund's specific legal form, so you can explore your portfolio at whatever level of detail makes sense for you.
Definitions
1. Broad Asset Class
The highest-level grouping of what a fund owns. Broad Asset Class sorts every holding into one of 11 buckets, giving you an instant top-level read on your portfolio's composition:
- US Equity — Stocks of US-based companies
- International Equity — Stocks of companies based outside the US
- Sector Equity — Stocks concentrated in a specific industry, like technology or healthcare
- Taxable Bond — Bonds and debt instruments where interest income is federally taxable
- Municipal Bond — Bonds issued by state and local governments, typically tax-exempt
- Allocation — Funds that deliberately blend stocks and bonds in a single vehicle, such as target-date or balanced funds, rather than holding one asset type exclusively
- Alternative — Non-traditional strategies such as hedging or derivatives
- Commodities — Physical goods like gold, oil, or agricultural products
- Nontraditional Equity — Equity strategies that go beyond simply buying and holding stocks
- Miscellaneous — Holdings that don't fit neatly into a standard category
- Money Market — Short-term, low-risk instruments focused on preserving principal
2. Morningstar Category
A classification system introduced by Morningstar in 1996 to group funds by what they actually own, not just what they claim to do. Because a fund's stated objective (like "growth") often doesn't tell the full story (some growth funds buy large blue-chip companies, others bet on small startups), Morningstar analyzes each fund's real holdings and assigns it to one of 127 categories across 11 groups (Broad Asset Class). Funds in the same category share similar risk factors and tend to behave alike, making it easy to compare apples to apples when evaluating your investments.
3. Global Category
A standardized classification system introduced by Morningstar in 2010 to make funds comparable across different countries and markets. While Morningstar Category is tailored to the US fund landscape, Global Category uses a single worldwide framework, grouping funds into nine broad groups like Equity, Fixed Income, Allocation, and Commodities, so that a US bond fund and a Canadian bond fund can be evaluated side by side. It's the lens Monarch uses when your portfolio spans investments from multiple regions.
4. Prospectus Objective
The stated investment goal as written in a fund's official legal documents. It describes what the fund is trying to accomplish, like "Growth," "Income," or "Balanced," in the fund's own words, as filed with regulators.
5. Aggregated Category
A combined label that pairs a fund's home market (like "US Fund" or "Canada Fund") with its Morningstar Category, giving you both where the fund is domiciled and what it invests in at a glance.
6. Index Strategy
Describes how an index-based fund is constructed and maintained. For example, "Passive Capitalization" tracks a market-cap-weighted index like the S&P 500, "Screened" funds apply filters like ESG criteria, and "Fundamental" funds weight holdings by financial metrics rather than market size.
7. Legal Structure
Describes the legal and regulatory form a fund takes, such as a traditional mutual fund, an ETF-like unit investment trust, a retirement-plan-only collective trust, or a 529 college savings plan. This affects who can invest, how shares are bought and sold, and how the fund is taxed.