If you are searching for AOL My Portfolio, you have probably already discovered that it does not exist anymore. For years it was one of the simplest ways to track your stocks. Then AOL shut down its finance tools, and a lot of people who relied on it for tracking their investments were left without a home for that data.
The good news is the features of AOL My Portfolio, like watching your stocks, checking gains and losses, keeping tabs on dividends, is still very doable. You just need a new place to do it.
What people actually miss about AOL My Portfolio
Most investors did not love AOL My Portfolio because it was flashy. They liked it because it was simple. You added your stocks, you monitored how they were performing, and that was mostly it. There was not a steep learning curve and not a lot of clutter getting in the way of the performance metrics you actually cared about.
A lot of portfolio tools try to do everything at once and end up feeling more like a trading terminal than something you would check with your morning coffee. Most people did not love AOL My Portfolio because it was flashy. They liked it because it was simple. You added your stocks, you saw how they were doing, and that was mostly it. There was not a steep learning curve and there was not a lot of clutter getting in the way of the numbers you actually cared about.
A lot of portfolio tools try to do everything at once and end up feeling more like a trading terminal than something you would check with your morning coffee. A replacement stock portfolio tracker should have this same simplicity.
What features should a replacement have?
Before picking a new tool, it helps to think about what you want out of it beyond just a list of investments.
A great investment portfolio tracker should be easy to use, and allow you to track stocks, ETFs, and mutual funds. It should offer a variety of performance metrics, not just a basic gain or loss number. It should let you compare your performance against market indexes, so you have some sense of how you are actually doing relative to the broader market. Viewing a graph of your investment performance makes it easy to see how your investments are doing at a glance.
If you want to go a step further than AOL’s My Portfolio features, look for a tool that lets you track dividends, reinvested dividends, and capital gains.
Getting your portfolio set up again
Starting over does not have to mean starting from scratch in terms of effort. Most of the work is just re-entering your investment purchases and other transactions.
Here is a simple way to approach it.
First, gather whatever records you still have, whether brokerage statements, tax documents, or even an old spreadsheet where you jotted down purchase prices. Second, set up your account in EquityStat. Third, enter your purchase transactions rather than just the current share count, since this is what lets EquityStat calculate your real cost basis and your real return instead of a estimate.
It is a bit of setup, but once it is done you end up with something far more accurate than what AOL My Portfolio ever gave you in the first place.
Moving forward
Losing a tool you were used to is frustrating, even one as simple as AOL My Portfolio. The upside is that rebuilding gives you a chance to track your investments with more accuracy than before, especially when it comes to dividends and true cost basis.
If you decide to move your portfolio into EquityStat, take the time to enter your investment purchases and dividend history correctly from the start. It makes every number that follows worth trusting.