If you’re just getting started, tracking investments might seem like a mystery. Thankfully, modern tools and technology make it easier than ever to figure out how to manage your stock portfolio and to track it. This quick guide gives you tips and four app suggestions to help you do just that.
Tips for Getting Started
Before you can get serious about tracking your stocks online, you have to take the first step: setting up your portfolio. Kiplinger suggests that when you create your stock portfolio online with the right brokerage, you might get the benefit of an online stock portfolio tracker included in the features. Yahoo Finance and Kiplinger.com deliver the basic tools you need to track the value of your portfolio.
It also helps to keep history in mind. Research the movements of your stock portfolio’s value over various time frames to give yourself a better idea of what to expect in the long-term. After all, as Kiplinger notes, stocks often bounce around in the short-term, but the day-to-day doesn’t matter as much when you’re investing for the long-term.
Personal Capital
The Balance notes that Personal Capital is among the most popular ways to track investments if you’re not working with an advisor. This SaaS has more than a million users who enjoy its charts and graphs, comparison tools that let you see how your stocks are performing compared to whatever stock market index you want to use as a barometer. Kiplinger also calls out Personal Capital, noting that it gives you more than just the basics with the ability to see market value, risk and the size of your position in addition to performing basic investment analysis.
SigFig Wealth Management
SigFig Wealth Management’s app for Android and iOS, lets you keep tabs on all your investment accounts. It’ll load accounts from more than 80 different brokerages in the United States onto one dashboard, along with real-time views of everything you own — stocks, mutual funds and options included. You can also get weekly email summaries of how your accounts are performing along with news that could impact your holdings. This free app even offers analysis to check for any hidden fees. There’s a fee-based option to automate investing too.
Ticker
Investopedia note that the Ticker app allows you to manage multiple portfolios all from a single dashboard. The app is free on iOS and Android. It offers a variety of charts and analytics to give you the real-time information you need to stay on top of your investments. You can manually enter trade information, create multiple watch lists and set alerts to be notified whenever stocks trade below or above a set level.
Yahoo! Finance
This is more than just a free stock portfolio manager. More than one million users are already taking advantage of the free Yahoo! Finance app, according to Investopedia. With its easy use and clear design, you’ll feel like a pro while checking your commodities, bonds and stocks in real-time. Create watch lists and get live quotes along the way. Additionally, you’ll have access to breaking financial news too. It’s available on iOS and Android.
