Morningstar Magazine - August/September 2018 - 6

Contributors

Magazine

Mara Dobrescu

Matias Möttölä

Mara Dobrescu, associate director of fixed-income
strategies for Morningstar Manager Research,
EMEA, and Matias Möttölä, associate director
of multiasset and alternatives strategies,
collaborated on this issue's Spotlight feature,
"Priced to Fail" (Page 31). "Analyzing mutual funds
on a day-to-day basis, we had amassed a
great deal of anecdotal information on fixedincome funds struggling to beat their benchmarks,"
Dobrescu says. "But this study illustrates
just how widespread that phenomenon is. It also
clarifies that fees are the biggest driver of
this chronic underperformance, which we hope
encourages fund companies to lower costs."
Dobrescu started at Morningstar as a data analyst
focused on French mutual funds in 2008. She
joined the research team in 2011. Möttölä began
his career in 1995 as a business journalist in
Finland, his native country, and joined Morningstar
in 2010.

Maciej Kowara

Stuart Bradford

Senior manager research analyst Maciej Kowara
worked with Morningstar editorial board
member Paul D. Kaplan to answer the question
"How Long Can a Good Fund Underperform?"
(Page 42). The results surprised him: "I had no idea
that these underperformance lengths are on
average so long, even for good managers. Makes
you wonder about an industry where you can
routinely pay for nothing for 10 years." Kowara has
20 years of experience in the industry. He
started as a mutual fund analyst at Morningstar,
worked as a portfolio manager for Morningstar
Investment Services and later at Aegon/
Transamerica, and returned to Morningstar in 2016.

Illustrator Stuart Bradford says the challenge of
working on investment stories is "simplifying and
distilling a lot of moving parts. I started with
abstract photography; adding imagery related to
finance and mathematics tied it more closely
to the idea of research. Altogether, the illustrations
evoke an atmospheric world of calculation and
data, as if one is looking inside a machine."
Bradford works in the San Francisco Bay area and
specializes in health, medicine, science, and
business illustration for clients including The Wall
Street Journal and Harvard Business Review.

Editor-in-Chief Jerry Kerns
Managing Editor Laura Lallos
Editorial Board David M. Blanchett, Andrew Carter, Elizabeth Collins,
Lee Davidson, Adam Fleck, Sylvester Flood, Jon Hale, Thomas M. Idzorek,
Ben Johnson, Paul D. Kaplan, Haywood Kelly, Dan Kemp, Grant
Kennaway, Laura Lutton, Alex Morozov, Daniel Needham, Don Phillips,
Jeffrey Ptak, Hal Ratner, Tricia Rothschild, Anthony Serhan,
Christopher Traulsen
Contributors Muna Abu-Habsa, Brian Bernard, Alex Bryan, Mara
Dobrescu, Ken Foong, Robby Greengold, Benjamin Joseph,
Charles Keenan, Russel Kinnel, Maciej Kowara, James Li, Alec Lucas,
Rudy Luukko, Adam McCullough, Kevin McDevitt, Matias Möttölä,
Ryan Murphy, Sarah Newcomb, Francesco Paganelli, John Rekenthaler,
Daniel Rohr, Sheryl Rowling, Tony Sherlock, Aron Szapiro,
Ralph Wanger, Stephen Wendel, Natalia Wolfstetter, Michael Wu.
Art Director Alex Skoirchet
Designers Zach Sherwood, Paul Zdon
Illustrator Stuart Bradford
Photographers Matthew Gilson, Colin Lenton, Matthew Lomanno,
Scott Morgan, James Tweedie
Proofreader Mike Eiler
Publisher Leslie Marshall
Director of Advertising Sales Mary Uribe
Regional Sales Directors Dan Atkinson, Tony Lignelli, Stuart Roge
Morningstar, Inc.
CEO Kunal Kapoor
Managing Director, Design David Williams
Chief Marketing Officer Rob Pinkerton
Head of Brand Kristin Mateja
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Morningstar August/September 2018

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Morningstar Magazine - August/September 2018