Stock monitoring methods/softwareGuys……I need someones help and Im certain Im not alone amongst gumshoer. Im suffering information overload. Can anyone reco a good buyable system/framework for monitoring stock movements/info that is automated or at least allows infinite cut and paste entries or simply sell me theirs. I use yahoo but its v limited in how it deals with non specific info/notes. My broker bank is useless. So I rely on depleted memory cells….it aint working. Consequently, Im spending far too much non retirement time cobbling info together on scraps of paper, then forgetting where I put them.
Ive opened this discussion so that anyone with suggestions can comment. Thanx
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Alan; Congrats! I was hoping someone would start such a discussion. I t seems to me that everything has a cycle or pattern if we care to notice. In seemingly irrational things ,like the stock market, pattern tracking should be very applicable. However If you start from a wrong premise the model you develop will be flawed & not consistently reliable. Multiply that with the increasing computer analysis usage may have surprising results,such as 1000 point drop in market in recent memory. That being said, I like Alan would like to hear others thinking on subject.
Alan; as to depleted memory; Why don’t we get a depletion allowance like Oil & mining, seems depletion of ‘non renewable resource’??
If a ‘memory depletion allowance’ were allowed, I would never have to pay taxes again. So I, too, would love to hear about potential tracking/managing software solutions. Thanks.
There is a software called Tradestops, founded by Dr. Richard Smith. You pay monthly to use for trailing stop, alerts, etc. I thought it is a great idea. If I haven’t subscribed to Trade Station, I will probably try them out. http://www.tradestops.com
I don’t benefit anything from the company. Just thought it might be worth checking them out.
Hi Alan; Have you tried portfolios under Yahoo? You can customize the view. I have each of my brokerage accounts as a separate portfolio. It doesn’t do a roll-up so I have another portfolio which is a summation of the individual ones. For security reasons, I put in a percentage of shares that I own. There are lots of choices on columns. Here is my customized view; Symbol, Name, Price, Change, Shares, Days Val Chg + %, Price Paid, Mkt Value, Gain & % gain, 52 wk range, Notes. That is 11 columns: the max is 15. The symbol has a link on it. The transactions can be filtered over multiple years so you can readily see when you bought and sold a particular stock. You can also create different types of watch lists with comments in the notes about source, etc. I wish I had created one for all the stocks mentioned by Dr KSS but it would take days to do that now.
I know that you are in the UK; I am not sure if you know about Investors Business Daily (IBD). I was always curious about the performance of IBD 50 (stocks) so I created a snapshot portfolio with $1000 invested in each stock. They are constantly making changes but i kept mine as is. As of today, the portfolio dated 10/23/2013 has a value of 53,543.62 for a 7.09% gain; the portfolio dated 1/29/2014 has a value of 54,462.38 for a 8.92% gain.
Too bad I can’t give you a demo without giving away my password.
I agree that Yahoo portfolios can be a nice free tool, but I just wish they had kept access to the previous My Yahoo version available. The new one is much harder to navigate through, nowhere near as intuitive, and apparently disliked by just about everyone. But you can still set up multiple portfolios and if you just put in that you own 1 share in your watch lists, you can track performance a bit more completely.
Thanks to all so far. Yes I use Yahoo and its good at what it does ie cold numbers. Perhaps Im expecting too much, but my problem is that I look at a ticker and think ‘why did I buy that 2yrs ago? or ‘Why did I keep that or ‘what should I be watching out for and when’. It would be good to attribute a link to, say, KSS’s # num on Gumshoe thread xyz, or reference some feedback from the company website or whatever. Ideally this would be done semi auto by scouring the net or importing new company info releases. Numbers are v important, but its often the authors notes that clinch the deal. I would NEVER have bought Benitec….I simply dont understand the science well enough. An aside: When my son was born he had a v rough forcepts delivery which resulted in hemoraging in his brain water pathways causing a blockage, so his head was swelling badly…..Hydrocephalus. I set about reading everything on the internet and concluded that whatever was done, he would end up severely brain damaged. Armed with enough paper to reprint three telephone directories, I visited his consultant surgeon. He kindly accepted my volumes…and promptly dumped them in the bin saying, ‘Trust me, he’ll be ok’. Today, my 18yr old son has just started University and has had a perfectly normal life .Thank God and THANK YOU Mr Surgeon; you saved my sanity too.
My point is, no matter how much you read learned papers, unless you instictively understand the nuances of the language used, you will not truly understand whats being said. In the end you have to find someone you can trust to interpret. I think youll all agree that this is KSS’s genius (among many). I need to reference that info to remind myself of why I invested, so that I can see when things are NOT going to plan. So I simply want columns like , Ticker, price paid, price now. But also, who reco’ed and where with the link, company website link, important dates, things to watch out for. This is probably enough (and could be built in Excel). But I hate the idea of re-inventing the square wheel. Others must have trodden this path and refined it to show a lot more presently unconsidered pertinent and important stuff. Look at Travis’s database. I cant believe he goes back to square one everytime he researches a new tip. He ‘knows’ history about tons of stocks, authors and all their past tips etc going back yonks. There must be a model out there that I can simply import…..perhaps I should just ask Travis? (and start my own GS…No thanks !)
Please remember this discussion is not just for me…..there are 100’s of newbies essentially struggling with the same problem, who need your help. Thanks all. AH
Alan – May be you know this already. GS has a tracker but unsure if subscribers are allowed to manage this. I think you are looking out for something like this
http://www.stockgumshoe.com/tracking
There is no site that I know of that is collaborative enough to manage this information.
Yeh, Im aware of this and it makes scary reading for ‘the ones that got away’ ! GS doesnt allow users to manipulate the data and as far as I know wont give copies of the software. But I found that Yahoo does allow (a limited number ) of notes which helps a lot. Evernote wont work as it cant update stox data dynamically….in effect its a load of organised post-it notes.
Im astonished that theres no stox system. How many investors are there? and all needing a system. Someone’s missing a big earner trick I think.
Thanx for your comments.
Alan – Try this one out – http://www.ddmachine.com/
You can create a login for yourself, add tickers(presents in a windows explorer like tree) and you can also add notes for tickers, use ‘My DD’ component to add notes..looks to be the one that you are looking for
I am quite happy with my current system: I basically use the following website:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/#dashboard/follows/
and have a series of watchlists that track my holdings in various sectors. The watchlist features are quite extensive and allow you to track performance over time, daily movements, holdings, yields, ex-div dates, etc. I also use watchlists to track stocks of interest, say in the biotech sector. The site also have a portfolio feature which enables you to track portfolio performance, incl dividends.
I have given up trying to compile all historical notes. As an academic I used to hoard all historical information, but as an investor I am more interested in the current prospects of, say, AER, than why I bought it two years ago, although I may want to know why it jumped 30 per cent some months ago. If you want to store computer clippings you can use Evernote rather than hard copy or paper notes.
Essentially its the same as Yahoo. Still thanks for sharing.
I once advised someone here to keep their holdings down to 10 stocks, or monitoring and tracking becomes a full time job. I should listen to my own advice.