We have recently added a performance graph in the portfolio manager. For each investment in your portfolio you can see how that investment has performed over time. To see the investment graph, just click on an individual investment and the graph will display at the bottom right next to your list of transactions for the investment.
Many investors keep their stock portfolios in a spreadsheet. With a spreadsheet they can keep track of their investments and also calculate some performance metrics. This is a quick and easy way to track their investment portfolio’s net-worth without having to go to the websites where their stocks or mutual funds are held. In addition a stock spreadsheet is secure where only the owner of the computer has access to the stock spreadsheet.
In spite of the convenience, there are several drawbacks to using a spreadsheet to track your investments. One drawback is how do you update the prices for each investment in your portfolio? If you manually enter the prices, this could be a daily chore that is time consuming. You could use a stock service to provide real-time stock quotes. However, implementing this in a spreadsheet is not trivial. Also, what do you do if the stock service changes their user interface or the stock service goes down?
Another drawback to stock portfolio spreadsheets is you can only view your portfolio on the computer where the spreadsheet is located. If you have the spreadsheet on a home computer, you can’t view your portfolio at work. In addition if you have multiple computers and tablets at home you can only view your spreadsheet on one computer.
EquityStat’s portfolio manager was created to alleviate the problems of a spreadsheet. With our portfolio manager you can instantly see the real-time value of your investment portfolio. There is no need to enter the daily prices and you can let us worry about interfacing with the stock quote service.
Also, with EquityStat you can view your investment portfolio on any computer or device that supports a web browser. You can view your portfolio from home or work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In addition you can view your portfolio on a Windows or Apple computer as well as any tablets like iPads.
EquityStat’s portfolio manager also provides many performance metrics such as annualized return, year-to-date return, quarterly return and average price per share.
You can learn more about EquityStat’s features here.
We just released the 2015 8949 IRS tax forms. If you have sold any stocks or mutual funds in 2015, then you can generate IRS Form 8949 to calculate your gain or loss on a stock sale. EquityStat will automatically calculate your short-term gains and losses and long-term gains and losses and generate a PDF 8949 form. You can then save or print out this form and give it to your accountant or tax preparer. To generate Form 8949 click the Tools menu and then select the Generate Form 8949 menuitem.
Here is a schedule of investor, stock, money and personal finance conferences for 2016.
Advanced Personal Financial Planning Conference – Las Vegas
http://www.cpa2biz.com/AST/Main/CPA2BIZ_Primary/PersonalFinancialPlanning/PRDOVR~PC-PFP/PC-PFP.jsp
Finovate Europe – London
http://europe2016.finovate.com/
Technology Tools For Today (T3) – Ft. Lauderdale
http://www.technologytoolsfortoday.com/conferences
The Traders Expo New York
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
MIT Sloan Investment Conference
http://www.sloaninvestmentconference.com/
The MoneyShow Orlando
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference – Orlando
https://www.ici.org/events/upcoming/conf_16_mfimc
CFA Institute Conference: Wealth Management
https://www.cfainstitute.org/learning/events/Pages/03162016_118419.aspx
FinDevR New York
http://newyork2016.findevr.com/
Value Investor Conference – Omaha
http://www.valueinvestorconference.com/
FPA Retreat – Phoenix
http://fparetreat.org/
The MoneyShow Las Vegas
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
Finovate Spring – San Jose
http://spring2016.finovate.com/
Better Investing National Convention – Washington DC
http://www.betterinvesting.org/public/singletabs/event+listings/nonmembereventdetail.htm?eventurl=%2fmembers%2ftools%2fevents%2fnational%2f2016binc.htm
Strategic Investor Conference – Dallas
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/sic-2016/
MorningStar Investment Conference – Chicago
http://corporate1.morningstar.com/Morningstar-Investment-Conference/
The MoneyShow San Francisco
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
Finovate Fall – New York
http://fall2016.finovate.com/
Delivering Alpha – New York
http://www.deliveringalpha.com/delivering-alpha-ii/
The MoneyShow Toronto
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
FinCon – San Diego
http://finconexpo.com/
The All-Stars of Options Trading
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
The MoneyShow Dallas
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
The Traders Expo Las Vegas
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
According to the Wall Street Journal the best stock of 2015 was Netflix. It was up 134%. The worst stock of 2015 was Chesapeake Energy. It was down 77%.
You can see the list of best stocks here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/12/31/5-best-performers-in-the-sp-500-in-2015/
You can see the list of worst stocks here:
How did your investments do in 2015? What was your best stock? What was your worst? If you are not tracking your investment’s performance, consider using EquityStat. With EquityStat you can track the overall performance of your portfolio as well as the performance of each individual investment. EquityStat tracks the annualized return, year to date return, daily gain, overall gain and many other metrics of your investments. With these metrics you can easily determine what are your best investments and what are your worst investments.
We have added a few new features to the portfolio manager.
You can now create multiple portfolios to group your investments from multiple accounts. For example, you can have a portfolio for your stocks, mutual funds and 401k. To create a new portfolio click the New menu and then choose the New Portfolio menuitem. Click here to learn more about portfolios.
We have added a few new performance metrics – Quarter Return, P/E ratio and Dividend Yield. To see these columns in your portfolio click the Options menu and then choose the Change Columns menuitem.
There are times when all the investments in the top portion of your portfolio don’t display. To see all of your investments you have to scroll around. We have added the ability to maximize the portfolio so that we display as many investments as we can. To maximize your portfolio click the three line graphic in the upper left hand corner of your portfolio and choose Maximize from the drop down menu. The top portion of your portfolio will be expanded and the transaction section will be moved down to accommodate the investments section. This just gives you a way to make the most of your screen space and display more of your investment data. To restore your portfolio in panes (the default setting) click the Restore menuitem from the drop down menu.
Do you have any ideas for a new feature? Contact us and let us know.
We recently added a new feature to your EquityStat portfolio manager. You can now create multiple portfolios for your account. Having multiple portfolios gives you the ability to group and separate your investments. For example, you can have a portfolio for your individual stocks, a portfolio for your mutual funds and a portfolio for your 401K.
To add a new portfolio click the New menu and then chose the New Portfolio menuitem from the dropdown menu.
You will then see two new tabs. A tab for your current portfolio and a tab for your new portfolio.
To edit the name of your portfolio click the pencil icon, which will display an edit box.
Next type over the current portfolio name with the new portfolio name and click the Save button.
To view the investments of each portfolio click on the portfolio’s tab. From here you can also add new investments to the portfolio as well as edit investments.
To view the view the performance all your entire account (all portfolios) click the Account Value box at the top.
To delete a portfolio first delete all the investments in the portfolio. Once the portfolio is empty, click the ‘X’ icon in the portfolio tab.
EquityStat’s portfolio manager was built for investors by investors. As investors we found many portfolio managers just didn’t work how we wanted them to. Whether the portfolio manager was from a brokerage account, mutual fund or from a software company, many just didn’t work well. This was a driving force for us building EquityStat’s portfolio manager.
One major problem of other portfolio managers is they don’t refresh your investment prices and portfolio value automatically. To see your latest values, you have to manually refresh the page.
We didn’t want our portfolio manager to behave this way. With our portfolio manager your prices and portfolio values are updated automatically without you having to refresh the page. Every 15 minutes we query the latest prices of your investments and update your portfolio. In the upper right hand corner, we even display the last time the quotes were updated. All of this happens automatically without you having to constantly refresh the page to see how your investments are performing.
Another problem of other portfolio managers is entering transactions. When entering transactions the portfolio manager will post back the transaction to the webserver and then do a page refresh with the new data. This is very cumbersome.
EquityStat’s portfolio manager does all of the saving in the background. When you add or edit a transaction, the transaction is saved and updated behind the scene. The only thing you see is notification at the top of the portfolio that the transaction has been saved. The benefit of this is less page refreshing and a more natural, less cumbersome way of entering transactions.
In the coming weeks, we will highlight more design features or our portfolio manager and how it benefits our users.
If you bought Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) stock instead of paying for college, how rich would you be? Instead of having that fabulous wedding, what if you bought Berkshire? How about if you owned a couple of shares of Berkshire instead of your dream home, how rich would you be?
Use our Berkshire Calculator to find out. Just click this link
http://www.equitystat.com/pages/howrich.aspx
and then enter the year you went to college, had that fabulous wedding or bought your dream home. Next, enter the amount you paid. Click Go and you will see how rich you could be.
Warning: For those over 40 this calculator could make you sick to your stomach.
By default we display a pre-configured set of columns for your portfolio. If you desire you can easily change the columns that are displayed in your portfolio. To do this click the Options link at the top of your portfolio and choose the Change Columns menuitem.
Clicking the Change Columns menuitem will display a list of columns that are available and a list of columns your are currently using. You can add and remove columns as well as change the order of your columns. If you want a description of a column, just click on the column in either of the lists.
When you are finished change your columns, click the Change button to save your changes and get back to your portfolio.