Advisors have been rapidly increasing their use of model portfolios to better address clients' needs. More astounding is that despite market volatility their inflows are up over $350 billion in the last nine months. Morningstar launched a list of their best model portfolios and taking the top of the list was BlackRock's long-horizon ETF with a Gold rating. Shortly after was BlackRock Target Allocation ETF, and then a slue of Vanguard models. Core, CRSP, Russel, S&P, and Tax-Efficient Vanguard portfolios also got the highly touted gold rating from Morningstar. They also praised BlackRock's team and their highly respected research processes. These are all great options for those who want to add models.

Finsum: Target date funds are some of the most intuitive models for clients and the easiest to implement.