Comments on: I need a good portfolio manager.

Question: I need a good portfolio manager.

Lame_username — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:57:42 -0800

I'm looking for a great stock and mutual fund portfolio manager. It has to be web-delivered (I travel a lot) and free is always better. I have a very long wishlist of features I know I want and I'm open to the idea that there is some killer feature I don't know about that I also want. Of course, theres...

I've used Yahoo and Google's free managers and both fall short of my dream program in a number of ways. Here are some features I'd really like to see:

1) I'd like to be able to graph groups of holdings against various averages (S&P 500, NASDAQ, DOW, etc) for arbitrary blocks of time (last month, YTD, since I got focus and rebalanced on 2/4/07, etc). It isn't that helpful to know that AMZN is up a billion percent since I bought it -- I'd rather know how it has done over the last year.

2) I'd like to be able to keep all my holdings in one portfolio and have attributes that I can filter on. For instance, I'd like to see just "international" or "small cap" or "mutual funds" or "ETFs". Because no one could anticipate all the divisions in my brain, I'd prefer it if I could assign these labels myself. Failing this, I'd like to be able to assign multiple portfolios, while still retaining the ability to see all portfolios grouped together.

3) I'd like to have a daily performance view that shows today's results and a (no change) indicator for mutual funds since they are showing yesterday's close as today's results otherwise.

4) I'd like a way to easily and automatically identify holdings that I've had for more than a year. Even cooler would be an indication that I've held them for near to a year (say 10-11.99 months).

If you don't know anything that has all my features, I'd still love to hear which manager you use and why you think it is best. I don't care a lot about moving averages and other technical indicators, because I'm not that kind of investor.

My biggest goal is to track how my small cap holdings are performing against the Russell index or how my overall portfolio is performing against the broader averages.

By: jaythebull

jaythebull — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:19:23 -0800

I have had good luck with XLQ it is an Excel plugin. You can do just about anything with the software. It comes with some good templates and is reasonably priced.

By: procrastination

procrastination — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:22:31 -0800

In the past I have used software from Morningstar that "professional" investment advisers often use to pick funds. It was about $200 a year for funds alone. They also have a stock version.

They now have an online version that you can try for free for a couple of weeks. I don't know that it does everything you want, but it worked well for me before I switched brokers (my new one has what i want online).

By: jaythebull

jaythebull — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:33:07 -0800

Sorry - I glazed right over the web delivered req.

By: Lame_username

Lame_username — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 08:41:04 -0800

Jay: No worries. It was still an interesting plug-in. I think it wants to be a technical screener more than a tracker, but it does have some cool features and I'd never seen it before.

Procrastination: I'm more interested in tracking than screening. I have access to some pretty good screening tools already. Plus, I'm more of a buy and hold guy, so a lot of that stuff isn't really my focus.