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03-10-2018, 11:15 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 5,612
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Tracking your investments
Here is a question for you: what website are you using to track your stocks performance? I used to use the Watchlist at Globe and Mail - they had different parameters in their watch list like dividends, monthly and yearly performance, and the most important your daily dollar value change. I was able to input the number of shares I am holding in each stock and the watchlist was showing me the dollar figure up or down every day in almost real time(15 min delay).
They now changed - upgraded!- the site and this feature is gone!
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03-11-2018, 07:52 AM
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Join Date: Apr 2014
Posts: 233
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Td waterhouse is set up good and I use that one every day. For a quick quote I use stockwatch. Stay away from Stockhouse. It’s used by pump and dump crooks and you will lose money if you get involved with their picks.
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03-11-2018, 08:34 AM
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Join Date: Jun 2011
Posts: 3,713
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If you are a globe and mail subscriber they have a good portfolio tracker. They are getting rid of the old basic portfolio, wish they would keep that.
If not, Yahoo finance has an ok tracker. It doesn't track your dividends and cash balance but other wise it's ok, and free. I just update the cash balance periodically. You can run it on your smartphone as well. Those are the ones I am familiar with.
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There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. Aldo Leopold
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03-11-2018, 09:24 AM
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: Calgary
Posts: 331
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KGB
Here is a question for you: what website are you using to track your stocks performance? I used to use the Watchlist at Globe and Mail - they had different parameters in their watch list like dividends, monthly and yearly performance, and the most important your daily dollar value change. I was able to input the number of shares I am holding in each stock and the watchlist was showing me the dollar figure up or down every day in almost real time(15 min delay).
They now changed - upgraded!- the site and this feature is gone!
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I was in the same boat and have used globe investor portfolio for years free, no way I'm paying for it especially since it's slow with adds now. I signed up with Morningstar. They have a free portfolio tracker as well and I actually find it better than globe. http://www2.morningstar.ca/homepage/...?culture=en-CA
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03-11-2018, 09:28 AM
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 316
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Globe and mail was a decent site years ago, now they want money. I just use my direct investing account, everything I need is there, charts, research, immediate stock quotes, detailed portfolio holdings etc. For US stocks, commodities, options I use MarketWatch sometimes and in Canada use ca.investing.com. Lots of info available online just have to find the ones you like.
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03-11-2018, 09:51 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: GP AB
Posts: 16,236
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Once a month, I get a big package in the mail from JF...I see that things are still paying dividends, and my portfolio is growing nicely, and I file it away. Tracking everything daily would probably just make me anxious. Life is good.
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'Once the monkeys learn they can vote themselves a banana, they'll never climb another tree.'. Robert Heinlein
'You can accomplish a lot more with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.' Al Capone
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03-11-2018, 11:44 AM
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Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 3,081
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Scotia Itrade works for me.
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03-11-2018, 11:53 AM
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Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: one Fort or another
Posts: 768
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Best is to use your own custom spreadsheet ( or relational database if you have lots going on ) with appropriate calculation cells set up. Just enter daily close or intraday securities prices from a near real-time source such as TD Waterhouse or yahoo-finance, and dividend payouts from morningstar, and probable interest-rate movements from various finance sites, and various sources of regional and industry-related economic data.
It will give you a lot better idea of where you stand and where things are going, using criteria that matter. And it allows you to set up 'what if' scenarios to see how things could progress through to expiry of some complex strateg(ies).
Many broker's sites will have a display which implicitly tempts you to do things not in your best interest, to increase their brokerage fees (surprise, surprise). For example, you might get a day-to-day pie chart vividly showing how the 'value' of one account swings up and down on a day-to-day basis. You might see that you're down 10% overall for the week, which they hope might trigger some 'o-my-god' response to do a whole bunch more trading to avoid further loss after something has already bottomed. And then try to regain any lost ground by desperately doing a whole lot more trading to recoup losses, which of course won't work. But it nicely pads their brokerage fee income for the month.
Another useless or worse feature is calculating account positions based on current bond 'market' prices, rather than face value plus total coupon at expiry. For the vast majority of people who are not bond traders and have no intention of doing anything but holding any bond to expiry.
Further, if you have worked so hard every day in your career job to be able to save a little bit of after-tax income for investing, then you owe it to yourself to take care of those investments and track what's going on. Sort of like paying 70K for a new truck and actually doing proper maintenance on it. And if something looks really grim or promising over the long haul, you should do something about it.
For example, lots of companies dropped in market value a couple of years back when the oil price crashed. If you didn't have defensive positions on long positions and just thought 'i'm only in it for the nice dividends over the next 20 years anyways', then you got a big surprise when companies slashed or eliminated dividends entirely. You have to pay attention to what's going on every day, and track it all properly, but resist 95% of all impulses to do something about it. That's the game.
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03-11-2018, 12:21 PM
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Join Date: Jul 2009
Location: GP AB
Posts: 16,236
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Well, I guess I must be dumb then, just letting my portfolio manager with expertise show good safe returns year in and out. Hard to imagine a dummy like me could ever be worth 7 figures. Huh. I guess I owe it to myself to meddle with something that is working so well. I could probably make a real hash of it. Or I could trust a 65 year track record. Jarislowsky Fraser does seem to do ok though....
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'Once the monkeys learn they can vote themselves a banana, they'll never climb another tree.'. Robert Heinlein
'You can accomplish a lot more with a kind word and a gun, than with a kind word alone.' Al Capone
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03-11-2018, 12:25 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 11,349
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I use Stockhouse, which for some reason is down today. 
I bookmark each stock I have and check them and stocks I am keeping an eye on daily. They also have a little piece on the bottom of the page with the latest news of each company.
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“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
Thomas Sowell
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03-11-2018, 12:27 PM
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Posts: 1,247
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Morning star
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Never celebrate till you got your knife stuck in it !
Some times you catch the Big fish, some times you get stuck in Chip
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03-11-2018, 02:37 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2013
Posts: 653
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http://www.tmxpowerstream.com
Go big. This thing does everything I need and more.
Sent from my SM-G530W using Tapatalk
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03-11-2018, 05:02 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 318
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Your own spreadsheets are best, as you can organize them as you want.
I use a Stock Market Functions Add-In to get live updates and quotes. https://smf-add-in.blogspot.ca/
If not very familiar with excel you can choose a free program called jstock.
https://jstock.org/.
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03-11-2018, 11:19 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 5,612
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Buckwheat
I was in the same boat and have used globe investor portfolio for years free, no way I'm paying for it especially since it's slow with adds now. I signed up with Morningstar. They have a free portfolio tracker as well and I actually find it better than globe. http://www2.morningstar.ca/homepage/...?culture=en-CA |
Thank you! That is exactly what I was looking for! I only had a few minutes to play with this site and I do like what I see! 
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03-11-2018, 11:22 PM
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Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Edmonton
Posts: 5,612
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rmatei
Globe and mail was a decent site years ago, now they want money. I just use my direct investing account, everything I need is there, charts, research, immediate stock quotes, detailed portfolio holdings etc. For US stocks, commodities, options I use MarketWatch sometimes and in Canada use ca.investing.com. Lots of info available online just have to find the ones you like.
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I have a CIBC direct investing account but they only give me max of 10 stocks per page. I have around 50 stocks in my portfolio so I would have to “flip” thru pages.... not as convenient as the old Globe site where I could see all my stocks on one screen page...
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03-12-2018, 12:08 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Edm
Posts: 1,299
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Arty
Best is to use your own custom spreadsheet ( or relational database if you have lots going on ) with appropriate calculation cells set up. Just enter daily close or intraday securities prices from a near real-time source such as TD Waterhouse or yahoo-finance, and dividend payouts from morningstar, and probable interest-rate movements from various finance sites, and various sources of regional and industry-related economic data.
It will give you a lot better idea of where you stand and where things are going, using criteria that matter. And it allows you to set up 'what if' scenarios to see how things could progress through to expiry of some complex strateg(ies).
Many broker's sites will have a display which implicitly tempts you to do things not in your best interest, to increase their brokerage fees (surprise, surprise). For example, you might get a day-to-day pie chart vividly showing how the 'value' of one account swings up and down on a day-to-day basis. You might see that you're down 10% overall for the week, which they hope might trigger some 'o-my-god' response to do a whole bunch more trading to avoid further loss after something has already bottomed. And then try to regain any lost ground by desperately doing a whole lot more trading to recoup losses, which of course won't work. But it nicely pads their brokerage fee income for the month.
Another useless or worse feature is calculating account positions based on current bond 'market' prices, rather than face value plus total coupon at expiry. For the vast majority of people who are not bond traders and have no intention of doing anything but holding any bond to expiry.
Further, if you have worked so hard every day in your career job to be able to save a little bit of after-tax income for investing, then you owe it to yourself to take care of those investments and track what's going on. Sort of like paying 70K for a new truck and actually doing proper maintenance on it. And if something looks really grim or promising over the long haul, you should do something about it.
For example, lots of companies dropped in market value a couple of years back when the oil price crashed. If you didn't have defensive positions on long positions and just thought 'i'm only in it for the nice dividends over the next 20 years anyways', then you got a big surprise when companies slashed or eliminated dividends entirely. You have to pay attention to what's going on every day, and track it all properly, but resist 95% of all impulses to do something about it. That's the game.
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I like Arty's advice - it confirms my biases 
Plus, you should run in the inflation rate and look at your real return rather than just your nominal return. Brokers generally don't care about this stuff except in some mothballed article in their 'investor education' section. I speculate this will be more important in the next 10 years than it was in the last 10 
Last edited by Erik; 03-12-2018 at 12:17 AM.
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03-12-2018, 09:19 AM
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: Spruce Grove, AB
Posts: 3,045
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I use excel & track by fund daily off the internet. Either Morningstar or Globe & Mail. Can be done in any increment of time.
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