I am searching for an easy and inexpensive ways of tracking one’s portfolio effectively. I am fairly certain that the seniors here have their own ways of tracking their portfolio.
I haven’t yet found an easy way and hence end up not keeping a close watch on how the portfolio is doing as a whole and how the individual ones are doing on an annualized basis to compare with the index and possibly other funds.
I think effective tracking may give valuable insights into how I am doing as an individual investor and can help in shaping the overall investing strategy. For example, if my portfolio doesn’t give better returns after few years of comparison, i might stop all the additional work and put into a passive fund or employ some other strategy.
One way is to build a (free) portfolio on valueresearchonline.com
Apart from allowing comparison with various indices , one can also take care of splits, bonuses and dividends and it will adjust the returns accordingly.Additionally, it shows cumulative CAGR if your investments are spread outside equity (MF, FD etc)
On some other sites (moneycontrol, hdfcsec etc) where I have tried is that they show you absolute returns but valueresearch shows CAGR.
I use moneycontrol to track my portfolio. I have developed a excel sheet, which when feed with moneycontrol data on a daily basis, gives me total return (across asset class, like equity, MF, debt, real estate), %return, annualized return and how they compare with sensex, running cagr return value and so on.
This reminded me of a post I had written a few years back. Copy-pasting it here.
There is an old Chinese saying which says “whatcannot be measured cannot be improved”. I have thought about how I invest in the markets. As I get a monthly salary, I tend to put money into the markets also in monthly tranches. After a while it is difficult to measure the returns that I have got from my portfolio as a whole and not from individual stocks. All the websites that are out there that I have used does not really give a true picture of portfolio performance because it tracks the current holding and provides the percent gain or loss. I looked at various softwares, websites and did not find anything that actually helps me in doing this. So, I built a rudimentary spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel which helps me track my portfolio as a mutual fund on a NAV basis.
If you want you can use a similar concept. The concept is fairly simple and straightforward. The initial amount you start off with, say, Rs 1000 is your initial capital. Take an arbitrary face value (I chose 10 more out of convention, you could take 1 or 100 or whatever number takes your fancy). The number of “portfolio units” you allocate yourself are calculated by the total portfolio value divided by the face value (in this case, 1000/10=100 units).
Once you have the basic framework in place, it becomes easier from here. Every time you put money in your stock account, just calculate the number of “portfolio units” you would get. For example, if your initial capital of Rs1000 has grown to Rs 1200, your NAV would be 1200/100=12 (portfolio value divided by units equal new NAV). So, if you add Rs 60 to your portfolio, you will get 60/12=5 more units. So, you will have 100+5 units. So, your portfolio would be now 105*12=1260.
Keep track of a benchmark index if you are interested to know if your stock picking skills are good enough for you to continue at it. Over a period of time (not less than 3 years) if you are not doing better than the index, it is probably better to get out of managing your funds and hand it over to a mutual fund or an exchange traded fund (ETF).
https://www.edelweiss.in/offers free portfolio tracking. I was using moneycontrol for long but as listed about it was not giving the CAGR and other details. So I started exploring and found this one to be good. Anyone else trying other portfolio tools ?
Valueresearh i tried earlier but i discontinued because i found it difficult to use.
https://www.edelweiss.in/ Link: https://www.edelweiss.in/ offers free portfolio tracking. I was using moneycontrol for long but as listed about it was not giving the CAGR and other details. So I started exploring and found this one to be good. Anyone else trying other portfolio tools ?
Valueresearh i tried earlier but i discontinued because i found it difficult to use.
Hi Rohit,
I enter all the transaction in the portfolio part. One more thing i realize is it is better tool then the money control because you can see all the trasaction. In moneycontrol if one sales the old stock then that trasaction is moved to the transaction history. Transaction history list is not intutive for analysis.
Praneeth/Pankaj/Rohit/Mallikarjun/Akbar, thanks for responding, To start with I thought of trying edelweiss and money control and see if they suffice my requirements. I’ve played with them on the weekend and made portfolios based on my wife’s and my stock investments. I will share my feedback after few weeks of use.
@Abhishek, you have articulated the need for portfolio tracking very well, thanks for sharing, I will try my hand on a spreadsheet if none of the online tools are good enough.
@Subhash, money control portfolio made of better use with a spreadsheet I think is a brilliant idea. I will come back to you for the spreadsheet to try that out if the online tools themselves are not fit.
looks impressive but performance against index doesn’t work. Has someone managed to get this working? It falls back to default view after spending few minutes fetching the data.
moneycontrol
works as designed, but annualized performance is missing.
@Subhash, do you mind sharing your spreadsheet and educating the followers how to get this working with moneycontrol data?
I can’t get annualised return of the full portfolio on edelweiss. It gives annualised return of individiual stocks but not the full portfolio. Can anyone tell whether I am missing something or thats the way it is.
I have developed a basic portfolio tracking sheet on google.
You can check it out and develop your own in same fashion. You just need to enter the scrip bse code and the number of shares you hold in the highlighted cells. Copy and paste the link below…
I will second to Akbar…I have developed my own portfolio tracker using google spreadsheet - where in using functionas you fetch CMP, manually input quantity, rest all can be done using formula’s. You can also calculate XIRR if you manually input date’s of purchase.
Although, I am looking for one which can do this all automatically as entering data takes time and efforts, which are always rare commodity in my arena.
I would like to share a sample Google Doc Spreadsheet, which is very useful for portfolio performance monitoring and comparing with benchmark performance with minimal efforts.
With this following is automatically calculated on daily basis.
Annualized Yield on your Investment till date.
Annualized Yield of benchmark Sensex till date. Best part is that it takes only those days into account for which individual scrip was held.
Daily Price and its difference with yesterday price for individual security.
I like to track using Google Finance, because the possibilities are endless and you can customize the sheet as per your liking. You are not tied with the availability / unavailability of any feature in the Portfolio Tracking Tools on online websites.
**P.S.: In case any of you donât feel comfortable enough with EXCEL Formulas and want some customization in the sheet, let me know, I will try to do the same. **
Disc.: The quantities bought and sold in the sample portfolio sheet do not represent the actual transactions made by me or anyone else. This disclosure is being made to comply with the posting guidelines on Valuepickr.
