How to Track a Stock Portfolio
A stock portfolio is the collection of individual stocks owned by an investor. Personal investors typically own stocks in more than one company and sometimes the stocks were acquired in various places. Creating, maintaining and consistently reviewing a stock portfolio makes an investor better educated as to their personal financial standing. Knowledge and understanding is critical in any investing and the ever changing stock market is no exception. The advent of online stock portfolio trackers has made this type of investing surveillance easy and accessible to even the smallest of investors.
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Instructions
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Compile a list of all of the stocks you currently own in a notebook. Note the number of shares and the prices at which the stocks were purchased. You also need to note the dates the shares were acquired as well.
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Create an online account to store your portfolio information in. If you currently use an online trading firm, you should have portfolio tracking tools already set up with your information in them for stocks bought through that account. Add additional stocks manually to get a comprehensive overview of all of your holdings.
If your current online account does not offer the ability to add stocks not acquired through their firm in to your portfolio, sign up for or download a portfolio tracking program. A good free version is through Google.
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Sign up for automatic updates and set reminders for your self to monitor your track your portfolio and performance at least every four to six weeks. The key to tracking your portfolio is consistency and getting in to a routine is a good way to keep things under control and avoid any surprises.
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Monitor your stock holdings and pay attention to those stocks that are performing poorly or better than expected. Knowing when to sell shares of poor performers and buy additional shares of good performers is what tracking your holdings is about.
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Stock portfolios can show an investor where they have the bulk of their funds and what areas they need to increase holdings in. Reevaluate your portfolio from time to time, at least twice a year to ensure that your portfolio contains a good mix of stocks. For example, you would not want all of your stocks to be in technology and have nothing in other areas such as health care or retail.
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Tips & Warnings
Never invest money you cannot afford to live without.
Never share your portfolio information with anyone that you do not trust.
References
- Photo Credit keyboard image by Fyerne from Fotolia.com stocks and shares image by Andrew Brown from Fotolia.com
