Investing in the stock market is a long-term game. Whether you’re investing for 5 years or for retirement 30 years down the line, it’s a good idea to monitor how well your portfolio is doing from time to time.
There are a lot of benefits to doing this. Most importantly, you can see how your investments are performing. If you’re not comfortable with a losing streak, you can cut your losses early or decide to buy more shares if you believe the company is undervalued.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some effective ways you can track your investments. If you have some skills in programming, you can benefit from this piece of content as well!
Using Python and Stock APIs
If you’re more technically inclined and have some experience as a developer, you can set up a fully automated stock tracker using Python that pulls in important financial reports such as balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements on top of the live market data from stock market APIs. There are many reliable and free stock market APIs out there.
We won’t get into why the financial reports are important in this article, but I’ll be the first to tell you that manually looking for and going through them can be a chore, especially if you have a basket of stocks to look after.
If you have the technical know-how, use your skills to save precious time! If you’re feeling ambitious, it’s completely possible to create your own stock charts.
Sign Up for a Portfolio Tracker Tool
If you lack the programming capabilities, don’t worry! With the advancement of technology in finance, you can track how your investment portfolio is doing when you use a stock portfolio tracker. You can find these tools for free, too!
If all your investments are with a specific broker, you may not find this tool as useful because all your whole portfolio will be tracked by the broker. But most people invest in different vehicles and platforms and would love to summarize it all on one screen.
Portfolio trackers allow you to do just that. For example, if you have a 401(k) with Fidelity, Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, and Equinix REIT, all of this data can be compiled for you to track from one convenient location.
If you’re serious about your investments, some portfolio trackers offer investment advice for a fee. However, keep in mind that hiring your own certified financial planner could be a better option for this purpose.
Subscribe to Stock Alerts
If you’re not actively monitoring your stock portfolio performance, you should consider subscribing to stock alerts that are sent to you as an e-mail or text message. Most brokers offer this service and the information they give out vary.
However, there are third-party companies that also serve this function.
Normally, stock alerts give key information such as earning reports and price updates. Some may alert you when it’s time to buy or sell a stock if you’ve already set a target price. Depending on your needs, you can subscribe to daily, weekly, or even monthly alerts.