How to Monitor a Stock Portfolio
If you have savings that you don't need to immediately access, investing in the stock market can provide you with a much higher rate of return than a savings account. In the long run, the performance of a stock portfolio can easily top that of money sitting in the bank. In the short run, though, you must monitor your stock portfolio actively to safeguard your investment.
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Instructions
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Select a service so you can monitor your stock portfolio. Many financial websites and Internet portals allow you to set up an account so that you can track your stock portfolio from any computer (see Resources).
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Enter the symbols of the stocks that you have in your stock portfolio. If you do not know the symbol, you can search for it based on the name of the company.
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Record the price at which you purchased the stock and the number of shares that you purchased. If you purchased shares of stock on multiple occasions, you should enter a weighted average of the price at which you purchased the stock, based on the number of shares purchased at each price. The prices and quantities of stock purchased will be used to calculate your absolute and percentage gains.
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Examine the long-term performance of your stocks occasionally. You can create charts of a stock's price over the past several months or years. You may want to consider removing stocks from your portfolio that have been underperforming for a long period of time.
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Return to the service of your choice on a regular basis to monitor changes in the prices of stocks in your portfolio. The frequency with which you check on the performance of your stock portfolio will depend on the time frame that you have established for your investments.
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Tips & Warnings
If you have invested in mutual funds, price updates are often unavailable until after the market has closed for the day.
If you are anticipating a sudden gain in the price of a stock that you own, you may want to check many times during the course of a day.
Depending on the stock-monitoring service that you choose, there may be a short delay in how quickly the stock prices are updated.
