Online Investing

We participate in these activities because we have goals that require money: retirement, college education, a home, a business, and recreation. As we save and invest, we build a portfolio, or two, or three, for our different goals. Portfolio ...

Wh Portfolio management doesn't mean keeping a vigil over the prices of the stocks in your portfolio and, on spotting some unfavorable signal, calling your broker yelling, "Sell, sell, sell!" (Although there are people who live this way....

A well-tuned portfolio is a balance of risk [Hack #74] and return [Hack #83], which also implies the proper doses of quality [Hack #85] and diversification of several types. As it turns out, you have a choice when it comes to calculat...

Keep this information handy in case you need to obtain specific information in a later step. If you have only a few holdings in your portfolio, it's easy to build an online portfolio by entering the ticker symbols and numbers of shares for yo...

" In the financial world, asset allocation is to investing what location is to real estate, so the mantra on Wall Street is "Diversify, diversify, diversify." To invest with success, define your investment goals and then use asset allocatio...

However, maintaining your target asset allocation [Hack #74] requires some changes to your investment, because markets experience ups and downs that translate into gains in some areas of your portfolio and losses in others. Realigning your po...

The tools that provide recommendations on asset allocation ask you questions about your goals, tolerance for risk, and the length of time until you want to withdraw your money. Some of these recommendation-oriented tools analyze your current po...

Although free management tools offer tremendous features [Hack #76], more sophisticated tools can offer more detail to help you decide what to do. For many investors, digging up details doesn't mean parting with additional cash. Many fu...

If you're looking for a spreadsheet to help manage your portfolio or just looking for ideas, Jim Thomas (read about him in the Contributors section) has a spreadsheet you might like. In addition to slicing and dicing a portfolio of stocks fro...

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, espe...

Some income investors view bonds as the ultimate in safety, which they aren't, and therefore accept risks they aren't even aware of. By learning what you should do with bonds in your portfolio, you can reduce your overall portfolio risk, earn...

Mutual funds typically publish their returns [Hack #63] for the most recent one-year, three-year, five-year, and ten-year compound annual returns, and will publish their compound annual return since the inception of the fund if it has existed...

In many cases, this approximate approach provides an acceptable answer. However, published returns assume a single investment typically at the beginning of the time period. If you contribute to or withdraw from your portfolio, comparing your ...

In addition, you might want to compare the potential returns for multiple stocks to see which one best fits your portfolio. After you own a stock, reevaluating its future return from time to time can help you weed unacceptably slow growers from...

With any four of these parameters, you can solve for the fifth, which means that with a few qualifications you can turn any type of investment into an apple and then compare all the apples to see which one is the best for your situation. To m...

However, some of the most successful long-term investors, such as Benjamin Graham and Warren Buffett, have looked to quality companies to build portfolios of long-term investments. Warren Buffett's mentor and the father of value investing Ben...

If you need money, you might decide to sell some shares of stock whether it has performed well or poorly. As time passes, your asset allocation [Hack #74] might become unbalanced, so you sell some of your winners to boost the percentage of ...