Online Investing Hacks

Take the Sting Out of Portfolio Management

Buying stocks can be fun, but managing your portfolio can seem like drudgery unless you automate recurring tasks.

Contrary to what many think, managing a portfolio is neither tracking the performance of your holdings nor selling stocks whose prices have declined, languished, or increased to some target price. Tracking performance is merely measuring how well or poorly you have managed your portfolio. Selling stocks based on price performance alone is actually mismanaging your portfolio. The notion of managing your portfolio can seem daunting, especially because many people think that portfolio management means staying on top of the market at all times and religiously watching the price performance of your stocks. As a long-term fundamental investor, however, managing your portfolio is the proactive art of playing defense—protecting your portfolio from harm—as well as playing offense to enhance your portfolio’s performance. Surprisingly enough, with a bit of organization and the help of your computer, the task is much less demanding than you might think, requiring only a few minutes of work several times a year. This hack shows you how to accomplish your essential portfolio management tasks in a minimum amount of time.

Playing Defense

The long-term fundamental investor looks for growth of sales, profits, and earnings per share, because a company’s ability to grow its earnings eventually increases its stock price and, in turn, the value of ...