Tag: tips

Best Stock of 2016

Posted on | by equitystat

According to the Wall Street Journal the best S&P 500 stock of 2016 was Nvdia.  It was up 224%.

You can see the list of best stocks here:

http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2016/12/30/5-best-performers-in-the-sp-500-in-2016/

How did your investments do in 2016?  What was your best stock?  If you are not tracking your investment’s performance, consider using EquityStat.  With EquityStat you can track the overall performance of your portfolio/account 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.

Many online brokerages and mutual funds track an individual stock or mutual fund’s performance but you cannot get the overall return of all your stocks or mutual funds.  With EquityStat not only can you get the return each investment, you can also get the return for your entire account.  This way you know how well your investments are performing at any time.

 

 

 

5 Frequently Asked Questions About EquityStat’s Portfolio Manager

Posted on | by equitystat

5 Frequently Asked Questions

  1. How do I add a new investment?
    Click the New Menu and then choose New Investment from the dropdown menuitem.  A popup dialog will appear where you can add your new investment.
  2. How do I add/remove a portfolio column?
    Click the Options Menu and then choose Change Columns from the dropdown menuitem.  The Change Columns panel will appear.  To add a column select the column from the Available Columns list and click the Add button to add it to the Displayed Columns list.  To remove a column select the column from the Displayed Columns list and click the Remove button to remove it from the Displayed Columns list.  Click the Change button to save your columns.

    EquityStat Investment Portfolio Change Performance Metric Columns
    Change Stock Portfolio Columns
  3. How do I change the order of the displayed columns?
    Click the Options menu and choose the Change Columns dropdown menuitem.  The Change Columns panel will appear.  Select the column you want to change from the Displayed Columns list.  Use the up/down arrows on the right to change the order.   When finished click the Change button to save your changes.
  4. How do I sort the portfolio by Investment name?  How do I sort any column in the portfolio?
    To sort your portfolio by investment name, click on the Name column heading.  To sort any columns, such as Market Value, click on the column heading.  Clicking on the column heading will also toggle the sort between ascending and descending order.
  5. How do I sell an investment?
    To sell an investment add a “Sell” transaction.  To add a “Sell” Transaction, first select the investment you want to sell.  Next click the Add button in the Transactions section.  A popup panel will appear.  Enter your date, choose “Sell” from the Activity dropdown and enter how many shares you sold and the price you sold them at.  Click the Add button to save your changes.

    EquityStat Stock Market Portfolio Add Transaction
    Add Transaction Directions

New Column Options

Posted on | by equitystat

We recently added two new column options to our portfolio manager.  You can now display the Ex-Dividend Date and Dividend Paid Date for each of your investments.  To display these columns in your portfolio, click the Options menu and then choose the Change Columns menuitem.  A drop down panel will then appear.  Select the column from the list of Available Columns and add it to the list of Displayed Columns.  Click the Change button and your new columns will display in the portfolio.

In addition to these two columns, we provide a whole range of other columns you can add to your portfolio.  These columns vary from information about your investment to performance metrics.  Just add/remove the columns to configure your portfolio to your specifications.

New Feature in the Portfolio Manager

Posted on | by equitystat
EquityStat Portfolio Manager Stock Performance Graph
EquityStat Portfolio Manager Stock Performance Graph

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.

Ditch the Stock Spreadsheet

Posted on | by equitystat

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.

2015 8949 IRS Tax Forms Released

Posted on | by equitystat

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.

New Features in the Portfolio Manager

Posted on | by equitystat

We have added a few new features to the portfolio manager.

Portfolios

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.

New Performance Metrics/Columns

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.

Maximize Portfolio

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.

 

 

 

 

Creating multiple portfolios – New Feature

Posted on | by equitystat

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.

Create a New EquityStat Portfolio
How to create a new portfolio in EquityStat

You will then see two new tabs. A tab for your current portfolio and a tab for your new portfolio.

Change Portfolio Name EquityStat
How to change the portfolio name

To edit the name of your portfolio click the pencil icon, which will display an edit box.

Edit Portfolio Name
How to edit a portfolio name.

Next type over the current portfolio name with the new portfolio name and click the Save button.

View portfolio investments
View a specific portfolio

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.

Behind the Design

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Behind the Design of EquityStat’s Portfolio Manager

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.

Changing Columns in Your Portfolio

Posted on | by equitystat

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.

Change Performance Metrics in EquityStat's Investment Portfolio Manager
Change Columns In Your Portfolio

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.