Morningstar Industrial Classification System (Old - Hemscott)

Yahoo is using a part of the old Morningstar Industrial Classification system. This is the Hemscott system (Morningstar acquired that division of Hemscott in January 2008).

The old Morningstar system consists of 3 levels:
215 Industry Groups (L3)
31 Industry Categories (L2)
9 Sectors (L1)

I say that Yahoo is using a part of the system because they are using L1 and L3 only, and not L2.

You can perform a top down analysis by starting at the sector page
http://biz.yahoo.com/p/s_conameu.html
The 9 Sectors are:
Basic Materials
Conglomerates
Consumer Goods
Financial
Health Care
Industrial Goods
Services
Technology
Utilities

Clicking on Basic Materials brings up a list of all of the Industry's associated
with that sector. You can click on the "more info" link off to the right hand
side, doing so for Silver brings you to
http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/135.html
The dedicated page for this industry.

Notice that there is a chart with the symbol ^YHOH715. Clicking on that will
bring up a chart showing that industries performance up to the last 5 days.
Unfortunately there is no historical data for this which would allow us to plot
it.

Or you can jump right to the main Industries page at http://biz.yahoo.com/ic/

Here is a small list of the symbols associated with some industries:
^YHOh769 Accident & Health Insurance
^YHOh825 Advertising Agencies
^YHOh799 Aerospace/Defense - Major Diversified
^YHOh800 Aerospace/Defense Products & Services
^YHOh702 Agricultural Chemicals
^YHOh874 Air Delivery & Freight Services
^YHOh873 Air Services, Other
^YHOh712 Aluminum
^YHOh835 Apparel Stores
^YHOh718 Appliances
^YHOh885 Application Software
^YHOh762 Asset Management
^YHOh849 Auto Dealerships
^YHOh735 Auto Manufacturers - Major
^YHOh738 Auto Parts
^YHOh843 Auto Parts Stores
^YHOh851 Auto Parts Wholesale
remember there are 215 of these symbols, 1 for each industry. Keep in mind I think these symbols are next to useless since there is no historical price data for them that would allow us to bring them into AmiBroker to chart them as well as perform relative strength analysis.

Exchange Traded Funds are not included in this classification system. They have
their own and I will create a post discussing that some time in the near future.

As for Closed End Funds, they fall into the Financial Sector and are put in one
of three industries:
^YHOh765 Closed-End Fund - Debt
^YHOh766 Closed-End Fund - Equity
^YHOh767 Closed-End Fund - Foreign

The Telechart software and data service from Worden's use this old Morningstar system as well with the exception that they use L2 (Industry Categories) and L3(Industry Groups), and not L1 (Sectors).

Worden's use MG as the identifier for these Morningstar Industry Groups and
Categories. Each one has a 3 digit number assigned to it.

The higher level categories end with a zero and the name starts and ends with a
"-" so as to clearly denote it's status.
MG110 -Chemicals- is an example.
beneath each of these are spots for 9 industry groups.
MG111 Chemicals - Major Diversified
MG112 Synthetics
MG113 Agricultural Chemicals
MG114 Specialty Chemicals

But a few of the MIC categories have more than 9 groups so Worden's had to
combine and or move 6 of these groups.

They:
moved Basic Materials Wholesale into Wholesale - Other
moved Foreign Money Center Banks into Money Center Banks
merged Management Services with Business Services and called it
Business/Management Services
moved Newspapers into Publishing-Periodicals
merged Real Estate Development in with Property Management to call it Property
Management/Development
merged REIT - Industrial in with REIT - Diversified to call it REIT -
Diversified/Industrial
also
moved Apparel Stores from Retail to Specialty Retail

It is interesting to note also that TC2000 and FreeStockcharts.com are using L2
(Industry Categories) and L3 (Industry Groups).
MG110 -Chemicals-
MG120 -Energy-
MG130 -Metals & Mining-
MG210 -Conglomerates-
MG310 -Consumer Durables-
MG320 -Consumer Non-Durables-
MG330 -Automotive-
MG340 -Food & Beverage-
MG350 -Tobacco-
MG410 -Banking-
MG420 -Financial Services-
MG430 -Insurance-
MG440 -Real Estate-
MG510 -Drugs-
MG520 -Health Services-
MG610 -Aerospace/Defense-
MG620 -Manufacturing-
MG630 -Materials & Construction-
MG710 -Leisure-
MG720 -Media-
MG730 -Retail-
MG740 -Specialty Retail-
MG750 -Wholesale-
MG760 -Diversified Services-
MG770 -Transportation-
MG810 -Computer Hardware-
MG820 -Computer Software & Services-
MG830 -Electronics-
MG840 -Telecommunications-
MG850 -Internet-
MG910 -Utilities-

This is one area in which Yahoo certainly needs to improve.

Fortunately, Finviz also uses this old Morningstar Industry classification. They are using L1 and L3 just like Yahoo but have some really nice tools for tracking performance and for charting. Start by going to the Groups page. You can switch between the Sectors and Industries and view this data in all sorts of ways.

Next post ---> Morningstar Industrial Classification System (New - 4 level)

Trade well,
Monk