Once you start investing, it’s exciting to track your progress. It makes a lot of sense to keep an eye on a new aspect of your finances and make sure things are going smoothly.
Recent years have given way to services that allow you to track your investment portfolio. Some portfolio trackers offer you the chance to invest and track your portfolio, while others offer educational options and tools.
What is a Portfolio Tracker?
As the name implies, a portfolio tracker is a tool used to track the movement of securities held in your financial portfolio. A tracker will let you see how your current asset allocation aligns with your financial goals and compare your portfolio’s performance with market benchmarks and indices.
There are a number of potential benefits to using a portfolio tracker. For starters, it will show all of your investment holdings in one central location, making it easy for you to monitor your investment performance. Some portfolio trackers will also reveal important data on the securities’ gain-loss statements through the various trades that have been made.
A portfolio tracker will also show you how your securities are currently allocated to different market sectors (such as energy, materials, financials and consumer discretionaries) and shifts in this allocation over time. Based on this, you may want to rebalance your portfolio periodically to bring your asset allocation back into line with your objectives.
Read More: Breaking Down the Average Portfolio Mix by Investor Age
What to Look for in a Portfolio Tracker
The best portfolio trackers offer access to a wide range of investment securities and offer lots of useful research tools. These include publicly listed stocks and bonds, mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs), and even cryptocurrencies. Most trackers offer a basic option free of charge with upgrade options that can be purchased for an additional fee.
Speed is another important factor when choosing a portfolio tracker. The information should load quickly, whether you’re using a laptop or desktop computer or a mobile device, and stock quotes should be available in near real-time — ideally, within 15 minutes. Your portfolio tracker should also be easy to use and feature an easy-to-understand interface.
Top Portfolio Trackers in 2022
Here are some portfolio trackers this year that you may want to consider taking for a test drive.
Personal Capital — Personal Capital offers a portfolio tracker that surveys your risk profile and helps keep your asset allocation in line with your objectives. You’ll receive alerts whenever your holdings deviate from your desired portfolio balance and recommendations for adjusting your asset allocation to improve portfolio performance. The personal finance tool offers numerous features beyond portfolio tracking. It’s a one-stop-shop for reviewing your entire financial life. We’ll review other features in the next section.
Delta Investment Tracker — This tracker provides live price updates to a wide range of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs futures, options and cryptocurrencies so you aren’t caught by surprise. It offers an overview of your total portfolio balance at any given point in time as well as your current market positions and value, percent change and unrealized capital gains.
SigFig Pro Tracker — One big benefit of this portfolio tracker is that it automatically analyzes your portfolio to determine if you are overexposed to any particular industry or company. If so, it will suggest the proper asset allocation to optimize your portfolio’s performance. It also searches for hidden fees that might be eating into your investment returns.
Sharesight — This award-winning portfolio tracker provides a holistic, in-depth overview of portfolio performance. It allows tracking of stocks from more than 30 different global stock exchanges, making it easy to benchmark your portfolio and compare your performance to similar portfolios. By also tracking dividends, Sharesight simplifies investment tax reporting.
Ziggma — This portfolio tracker offers an intuitive portfolio analysis along with portfolio monitoring tools and a “quality check” based on its personal methodology. A wide range of portfolio monitoring tools and model portfolios for benchmarking make this a good tracking tool for both buy-and-hold and active investors.
Kubera — By tracking both traditional and crypto securities in one place, this tool helps simplify portfolio management. You can get the latest balances from your crypto wallets in real time and link accounts from more than 20,000 banks worldwide. As an added bonus, Kubera will provide a snapshot of your total net worth once you enter all of your investments and other assets, including your home’s value and the value of your vehicles.
More on the Personal Capital Dashboard
Tracking your investment portfolio is only one part of your overall financial picture. In addition to tracking your investments, you can get clarity on your money with the following tools.
Personal Capital Dashboard: This tool provides a 360-degree view of your money so you can see all your accounts in one place, including your investments. Take a deeper look into your investments with planning and analytics tools.
Investment Checkup: Assess your asset allocations and compare your current portfolio allocation to the ideal target allocation to minimize risk and maximize returns to meet your financial goals.
Retirement Planner: Stay on track and improve your chances of retirement success. Even with balances going up and down, the Retirement Planner can be used to make success projections based on risk tolerance, long-term goals, spending habits and more.
Fee Analyzer: You could be losing thousands of dollars from hidden fees in your mutual fund, investing and retirement accounts. Use this tool to spot hidden fees charged by financial institutions, plus annual fees for mutual funds and other assets.
Portfolio Tracking is Just the Start
What matters most is finding a portfolio tracker that works best for you. The best program in the world is worthless if you don’t use it. The more that monitoring your investment accounts feels like fun, the more inclined you’ll be to take charge of them.
Get Started with Your Free Financial Dashboard
Personal Capital compensates Don Sadler (“Author”) for providing the content contained in this blog post. Compensation not to exceed $500. Author is not a client of Personal Capital Advisors Corporation. The content contained in this blog post is intended for general informational purposes only and is not meant to constitute legal, tax, accounting or investment advice. You should consult a qualified legal or tax professional regarding your specific situation. Keep in mind that investing involves risk. The value of your investment will fluctuate over time and you may gain or lose money.