Video
What You'll Learn
The Blueprint gives you the ability to make your own decisions. To research any ETF yourself and know exactly where it fits — or whether it fits at all. This lesson is the practical side of that ability: the seven free tools you'll use to research every holding you ever consider.
You already know what to look for. Now you'll know where to find it.
Building on What You Already Learned
This lesson assumes you've completed:
- Foundation Holdings — Step 3, Lesson 2
- Accelerator Holdings — Step 3, Lesson 3
- Safety Buffer — Step 3, Lesson 4
- The Four Criteria for Evaluating Any ETF — Step 3, Lesson 5
If any of those feel rusty, click back through. The research workflow only makes sense once the criteria are clear.
Why This Matters
Most people invest the way they were taught — hand their money to someone else, hope it grows, never look under the hood. That is not the steward's path.
The steward learns. The steward checks. The steward knows what is in the portfolio and why it is there. The Blueprint is built on that posture, and the seven tools in this lesson are how you live it out.
You will not need a Bloomberg terminal. You will not need a paid subscription. Every number you need to evaluate an ETF for The Blueprint is publicly available, free of charge, on seven websites. You just need to know which site does what.
The Research Stack
| # | Site | What it's best for | When to use |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PortfoliosLab ETF Screener | Discovering new candidates by filtering the full ETF universe | Before you have a ticker in mind — finding what to evaluate |
| 2 | ETF.com | Price chart, fund overview, AUM, expense ratio | First evaluation stop — the 10-second filter |
| 3 | StockAnalysis.com | Distribution history, monthly payment consistency | Verifying frequency and payment amounts |
| 4 | TotalRealReturns.com | True total-return picture, including reinvested distributions | Any high return-of-capital holding (CLM, CRF, similar CEFs) |
| 5 | PortfolioVisualizer.com | S&P 500 correlation calculation, portfolio stress testing | The correlation criterion + advanced cross-checks |
| 6 | CEFConnect.com | Closed-end fund discounts and premiums | When researching any CEF candidate |
| 7 | M1 Finance research tab | Margin Requirement (M1-only data) | Final check before buying — non-negotiable |
A Note on Optional Tools
Snowball Analytics is a solid platform many ETF investors use for general research. It's not part of the core seven because everything it does is covered by the stack above — but if you find it helpful, no harm in adding it.
Site by Site — What Each One Does
1. PortfoliosLab ETF Screener — The Discovery Tool
This is where you look before you have a ticker in mind. PortfoliosLab maintains a screener of the entire ETF universe — thousands of funds — and lets you filter by category, expense ratio, dividend yield, returns, max drawdown, and other risk metrics.
What you'll do: Open the screener, add filters that match what you need.
- Hunting for Foundation candidates? Filter by category (Senior Loans, Multi-Sector Bond, Preferred Securities, CLOs), set max drawdown and volatility caps, sort by yield.
- Hunting for Accelerator candidates? Filter by category (Covered Call, Income), set a minimum dividend yield around 10%, sort by Sharpe ratio.
The screener narrows thousands of ETFs down to a short list of names worth researching. From there, you take each ticker through the rest of the stack.
Use it for: Discovery. Generating new candidate tickers. Not for final decisions — that's what the next six sites are for.
2. ETF.com — The 10-Second Filter
Once you have a ticker, this is your first stop. Type it in, get a clean profile page in seconds.
What you'll see:
- Current distribution yield
- Expense ratio
- Assets under management (AUM)
- Fund launch date
- The price chart (1-year, 2-year, 5-year)
What you're checking: Pull up the price chart. Is it stable? Drifting gently? Or falling off a cliff while still paying a high yield? An ugly multi-year chart with no broad market explanation is your stop signal. Move on. Save the thirty minutes.
Stable or gently fluctuating price chart over 1–2 years.
3. StockAnalysis.com — The Dividend Deep Dive
ETF.com gives you the overview. StockAnalysis gives you the dividend history.
What you'll see (Dividends tab):
- Every distribution the fund has ever paid
- Date and amount of each payment
- Pattern over months and years
What you're checking: Two things.
First — is it actually monthly? Twelve payments a year, every year. Quarterly or irregular = not Blueprint compatible.
Second — are the amounts consistent or growing? Distributions that drop month after month are a warning sign. The strategy is deteriorating. You want flat or rising, not declining.
Twelve consecutive months of consistent (or growing) distributions over 2+ years.
4. TotalRealReturns.com — The Truth Check for High-ROC Holdings
The most specialized tool in your stack.
Why it exists: Some funds — especially classic closed-end funds like CLM and CRF — pay distributions that include a large portion classified as return of capital. On a regular price chart, these funds can look like they're slowly bleeding, when actually the total return (price change plus reinvested distributions) is genuinely strong over decades.
What you'll see: Enter a ticker, and the site shows you what your money would actually have done over time with all distributions reinvested. The real, full-picture total return.
When to use it: Any time you're researching a holding that pays significant return of capital. CLM, CRF, and similar CEFs absolutely require this check before they go in your portfolio.
Verify positive long-term total return when reinvested. If TotalRealReturns shows the fund truly destroying capital across 10+ years, walk away — no matter how high the headline yield.
5. PortfolioVisualizer.com — The Correlation Calculator
The technical side of the four criteria.
What you'll do: Enter your candidate ticker and SPY (representing the S&P 500). The site calculates the correlation coefficient.
What you're checking — where the ETF fits in your portfolio:
- Below 0.5 → Foundation pie territory (low correlation = stability)
- Moderate correlation → Accelerator pie acceptable if yield is strong
- Very high correlation (above 0.8) → behaves like the market itself — usually doesn't earn its keep in The Blueprint
Bonus use: Drop multiple holdings in at once and see how they move together as a group. This is how you stress-test whether a new candidate truly diversifies your existing portfolio or just duplicates exposure you already have.
Target for Foundation: Correlation below 0.5. The lower the better.
6. CEFConnect.com — The CEF Discount/Premium Tracker
Purpose-built for closed-end funds. PDI, GOF, KIO, HYT, JFR, and others — these are all CEFs, and they make up a meaningful portion of both Foundation and Accelerator holdings.
What's special about CEFs: Unlike regular ETFs, a closed-end fund can trade at a price different from what its underlying assets are actually worth.
- Trading above asset value = premium (you pay more than what's inside)
- Trading below asset value = discount (you pay less than what's inside)
What you're checking: A CEF trading at a 5% discount means you're buying a dollar of assets for 95 cents — a built-in bonus on top of the yield.
Buy at a discount when possible. Avoid buying CEFs at significant premiums.
7. M1 Finance Research Tab — The Margin Requirement Check
Non-negotiable. The last stop before you ever pull the trigger.
Why M1 only: M1 Finance sets Margin Requirements internally based on their own risk model. This number does not exist anywhere else on the internet.
What you'll do: Inside your M1 account, search the ticker. Look at the security detail page for "Margin Requirement."
What you're checking:
| Margin Requirement | What it means |
|---|---|
| 25% | Ideal — and what you really want for Foundation Holdings you're borrowing against |
| 50% | Acceptable upper limit for any Blueprint holding |
| 75%+ | Dead weight in a margin-based system |
≤ 50% for any Blueprint holding. 25% for Foundation Holdings specifically — those are the assets actually doing the borrowing work.
Use Them in This Order
- PortfoliosLab → Discover new candidates from the full ETF universe
- ETF.com → Quick overview. Does the chart look healthy?
- StockAnalysis.com → Are distributions monthly and consistent?
- TotalRealReturns → If high-ROC (CLM, CRF, similar): is total return real?
- PortfolioVisualizer → What's the S&P correlation?
- CEFConnect → If it's a CEF: discount or premium?
- M1 Finance → Margin Requirement in range?
After you research three or four ETFs, this sequence becomes automatic. You'll be able to clear a candidate in about five minutes — which is exactly what we'll walk through in Lesson 2.
What Does NOT Belong in Your Research Stack
- Random Reddit threads or YouTube ticker hype. Crowd-sourced enthusiasm is not research. The seven tools above are. Stick to the data.
- A single site for everything. No one site shows you all seven things. You need the stack — that's why it's a stack.
- Skipping M1's Margin Requirement check. Easy to forget because it's the last step. Never skip it. A high MR holding will quietly choke your borrowing capacity even if everything else looks great.
- Skipping TotalRealReturns on high-ROC holdings. Funds like CLM and CRF can look scary on a basic price chart. Always verify the real total return before you decide.
- Buying off the screener alone. PortfoliosLab is great for discovery, but a candidate is just a candidate. It still has to clear all six other checks before it goes in your pie.
Bookmark These Now
Open each site and bookmark them in a folder called Blueprint Research:
- PortfoliosLab ETF Screener
- ETF.com
- StockAnalysis.com
- TotalRealReturns.com
- PortfolioVisualizer.com
- CEFConnect.com
- M1 Finance research tab (inside your M1 account)
Seven tabs. One steward's toolkit.
What's Next
Lesson 2: What to Look For — The 5-Minute Check walks the exact step-by-step workflow on a real ticker. You'll see what to look for at each site, what counts as a green light, and what counts as a red flag. After Lesson 2, you'll be able to clear any candidate ETF in five minutes flat.
Lesson 3: What to Avoid — The Do Not Buy List covers the categories of ETFs that fail every test, the named tickers that show up over and over (with the actual NAV decline numbers), and the most misunderstood concept in dividend ETF investing: NAV erosion. Not all NAV drift is bad — but if you don't understand the difference, it can quietly destroy your returns. We'll fix that.
"Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things." — Matthew 25:23 · The steward who learns the tools is the steward who gets entrusted with more.
Key Takeaway
Seven free sites. One fixed sequence. PortfoliosLab discovers candidates, ETF.com filters on price health, StockAnalysis confirms monthly consistency, TotalRealReturns verifies high-ROC funds, PortfolioVisualizer checks correlation, CEFConnect checks CEF discounts, and M1 Finance gives you the margin requirement. Run them in order. Every time.