Top 5 Best Stock Portfolio Trackers for 2020

Are you looking to invest in stocks and build a portfolio of equities? You will need a service that will be able to help you track and report on your investments. Our in-depth research and comparison of the best stock portfolio trackers provide you five great options to choose from.

What is a Stock Portfolio Tracker

A stock portfolio tracker enables you to track your existing and planned investments, linking stock screening, research, and watchlist management together. The best stock tracking solutions will include portfolio analytics, asset allocation, portfolio weighting, and rebalancing services, enabling you to effectively manage your stock portfolio.

10 Key Stock Portfolio Tracker Features

• Account Pricing & Services: Many services offer free stock portfolio tracking, usually with premium accounts that provide more powerful features.
• Stock Portfolio Watchlist Tracking: The ability to see the up-to-date stock pricing, win/loss per stock & position sizes.
• Research & News: Services offering news & research reports into your stocks provide a clear advantage when managing your portfolio & making investment decisions.
• Profit & Loss Reporting: Can you report on the overall profit & loss of your entire stock portfolio
• Stock Portfolio Calculation & Performance Reporting: Portfolio analytics will allow you to evaluate the portfolio’s risk and rate of return annually & throughout the lifecycle of the portfolio.
• Portfolio Weighting & Rebalancing: Features to enable you to calculate the weight of the stocks in your portfolio and assist you with rebalancing the weightings.
• Portfolio Asset Allocation: The ability to report on the asset allocation in your portfolio allows you to assess if you are over-exposed to a particular industry or sector.
• Broker Integration: A service that has broker integration enables you to report & track your actual positions and even execute trades during rebalancing or tax-loss harvesting.
• Future Income & Dividend Reporting: Can the service help predict and estimate your future dividend income based on your existing or planned portfolio structure.
• Automated Portfolio Management: Can the service automatically create your ideal portfolio, buy & sell the stocks, rebalance your portfolio & perform tax-loss harvesting.

Stock Portfolio Tracker Comparison Table

Top 5 Best Stock Portfolio Trackers

Stock Rover: Winner – Most Powerful Free Stock Portfolio Tracker

Stock Rover is an industry-leading stock screening, research & portfolio management service. Benefits include a 10-year historical financial, earnings, dividend database & Morningstar analyst ratings. Add to this great stock tracking & portfolio analytics & you have our winner.

Account Pricing

• Free $0 – Scanning for 10,000 stocks, 43,000 mutual funds & ETF’s, broker integration, portfolio analysis & market news
• Essentials $7.99 US /mo – 5 years of historical data, 10 fair value, and margin of safety ratings per month + earnings calendar
• Premium $17.99 US /mo – 350 fundamental metrics, 10 years of historical data, stock & ETF ranked screening. 10 stock ratings per month, 20 fair value & margin of safety ratings per month.
• Premium Plus (Recommended) – $27.99 US/mo – 10 years of historical screening, unlimited margin of safety and fair value scoring, limitless stock warnings, and stock ratings + analyst ratings scoring.

Watchlist Tracking

Stock Rover enables you to powerfully organize and track your watchlist of stocks.

There are three types of Stock Tracking Watchlist:

1. Screening Watchlists help you identify potential investments using the extremely powerful stock screening & stock rating engine.
2. Watchlists help you organize your potential buys and report on hundreds of different financial indicators. Powerful, configurable column sets enable you to see exactly what you want.
3. Portfolio Watchlists are the main watchlists that enable advanced portfolio and analytics reporting. The portfolio watchlist can be connected to your broker to keep the data in sync or updated manually.

Research & News

The reason we rate Stock Rover so highly is because of their industry-leading stock scanning and screening functionality. This helps you build and track a portfolio of stocks that meet your investing criteria. Additionally, Stock Rover has a rating engine that evaluates the relative strength of a stock compared to its industry and sector competitors.

The list of fundamentals you can scan & filter on is genuinely huge.  Any idea you have based on fundamentals will be covered with over 600 data points and scoring systems.

Watchlists have fundamentals broken into Analyst Estimates, Valuation, Dividends, Margin, Profitability, Overall Score, and Stock Rover Ratings.  You can even set the watchlist and filters to refresh every single minute if you wish.

The Excellent Stock Rover Ratings Engine

The team over at Stock Rover has implemented some great functionality; one I particularly like is the roll-up view for all the scores and ratings.  Here I have imported the Warren Buffett portfolio, which includes his top 25 holdings.  I have also selected the “Stock Rover Ratings” tab.  This “Stock Rover Ratings” tab rolls up all analysis into a simple to view ranking system, saving a tremendous amount of time and effort while providing a wealth of insight.

An excellent new addition to the Stock Rover platform is the Research Report. This brand new service enables you to generate a professional, readable PDF report on the current and historical performance of any particular stock.

The research report creates something very new, a human-readable report which highlights a company’s competitive position, market position, and historical and potential dividend and value returns. In the image below, you can see the dividend-adjusted commentary on Comcast, a company I invested in because I found it’s excellent potential using my Buffett Stock Screener.

The Research Reports provide a genuinely comprehensive summary of any of the 10,000+ stocks on the US and Canadian exchanges. Research reports can be viewed in the browser and can be produced in PDF format for portability and sharing.

The best thing about Stock Rover’s Research Reports is they are Real-time, so the information is always up-to-date.

Profit & Loss Reporting

As you would expect from a good stock portfolio tracker, Stock Rover provides integrated profit and loss reporting. Key elements of the reporting are current portfolio value, percentage change, the annual rate of return, return on investment, your income earned from dividends, and so much more.

Performance Reporting

What I really like and appreciate is that with a few simple clicks, you can compare the performance of your portfolio to an underlying index such and the S&P500 or the NASDAQ 100.  This enables you to see is your portfolio is under-performing or out-performing the market.  Performance reporting is vital for anyone managing and tracking a portfolio.

But what is a good performance, 5%, 8%, or 10% growth per year? The answer is that any portfolio matching or exceeding the performance of the S&P500 in any given year is deemed a high performing portfolio.

If the S&P500 grows by 20% in a year, then your portfolio should have at least 20% growth also. If not, you can simply invest in an S&P500 index-tracking ETF and save yourself the time and effort in actively managing your portfolio.

In fact, you will need something that most discount brokers do not provide detailed portfolio analytics.

The image to the right details the level of reporting and analytics available in Stock Rover. You can clearly see the percentage of your portfolio in each sector and industry and the dollar amount of the investment.

In this example, I used the Berkshire Hathaway Watchlist available in Stock Rover to perform a portfolio analysis of the companies assets.  Here we can see that Buffett and Berkshire are highly invested in technology and financial services.  I guess Warren Buffett & Charlie Munger are not focused on diversification but on concentration.

Weighting & Rebalancing

The fact is that some stocks grow faster than others, meaning that they will consume a larger percentage of your overall investment that was typically wanted at the inception of the portfolio.

For example, if you want to maintain a 5% per stock weighting in your portfolio and one stock, Microsoft Corp, for example, has grown to consume 10% of the portfolio, you might want to rebalance by selling a portion of Microsoft shares and purchasing other stocks.

Stock Rover has portfolio rebalancing build in, and it can connect to your brokerage account and perform a detailed portfolio analysis and suggest which stock you need to buy and sell based on your weighting and rebalancing criteria.

Here you can see what you need to do to maintain a balance of 5% per stock, how many stocks you need to buy and sell for each individual asset owned.

Asset Allocation

One of the standout features in Stock Rover is the ability to view your existing asset allocation and your future allocation based on your weighting and distribution parameters.

Broker Integration

With Stock Rover, you get broker integration with practically every major broker, including our review winning brokers, Firstrade, and Interactive Brokers.

Stock Rover is not for day traders; it is for longer-term investors that want to maximize their portfolio income and take advantage of compounding and margin of safety to manage a safe and secure portfolio. You cannot place trades from charts, but it will take care of profit & loss reporting on your portfolio and provide recommendations for portfolio rebalancing.  Including income (dividend) reporting and scoring is a unique package.

Future Income & Dividend Reporting

As all smart investors know, to have a chance at excellent market-beating returns, you need to accrue your dividends. Another reason why I like Stock Rover so much is the detailed dividend and income analysis provided.

Stock Rover provides intelligent analysis to enable you to do just that.

Automated Portfolio Management

Stock Rover will not automatically manage your portfolio or buy and sell stocks for you.

It does connect to your broker and analyzes your existing portfolio, but if you want a completely automated service, then take a look at M1 Finance.

Stock Rover Related Articles & Strategies:

• Our Beat the Market Screener [Actually] Beats the Market
• 12 Legendary Strategies to Beat the Market That [Really] Work
• Use a CANSLIM Stock Screener Strategy To Beat the Market
• 4 Easy Steps to Build The Best Buffett Stock Screener

M1 Finance: Best Automated Stock Portfolio Advisor

M1 is an Automated Advisor or Robo Advisor that helps you construct a portfolio based on your risk/reward goals and investing preferences such as growth, income, or even ethical investing style. M1 Finance will also perform the buying, selling, balancing, and tax loss harvesting for you automatically.  And the best thing is, the stock trades are free.

Account Pricing

To use the M1 Finance automated investing platform, you simply need a minimum balance of $500.  All stock trades and automated services are free.  There is also no yearly charge for assets under management, which makes it extremely cost-effective.  So how does M1 make money? They also provide other services such as banking and loans, for which they generate revenue.

Watchlist Tracking & Performance Reporting

Controllability, visibility, and insight into your investments are the key advantages Robo Advisors or Automated Investing services bring to the independent investor.

Here you can easily see your portfolio’s value, gain, and return.

M1 allows you to report the performance and win/loss on a single portfolio or all of your portfolios.

Research & News

Within the M1 investing platform, you can access company profile information and basic financial metrics. It does not have a tremendous level of detail of Stock Rover, but the information is useful to help you get an overview of the company’s finances and expectations.

Weighting & Rebalancing

The ability to rebalance your portfolio is essential, as M1 says:

“Rebalancing restores an investment portfolio to its original target allocations. As prices of securities change over time, a user’s initial target allocations will drift.  This may result in a portfolio that no longer aligns with your risk profile or investing style.  Rebalancing allows you to reallocate funds to keep your portfolio in line with your accepted risk tolerance and financial goals.  Please keep in mind that any time you rebalance your portfolio, you will generally be initiating a series of buy and sell transactions.  Usually, every sale of security has a tax effect, which may be a gain or a loss.”

Portfolio Asset Allocation

You can instruct the M1 advisor to assign you money to specific assets based on your preferences, whether it is specific ETFs, sectors, or even bonds.

Broker Integration

M1 is essentially a fully integrated broker, so to enable the automated maintenance of your portfolio, they execute your trades with their preferred liquidity provides. There is no fee for any of the transactions conducted on your behalf.

Future Income & Dividend Reporting

With M1, you can decide if you want to reinvest or have your dividend income transferred t your current account. M1 also provides visibility into your expected dividend earnings for the year.

Automated Portfolio Management

The unique selling point and the best feature of M1 Finance is the fully automated management of your portfolio.  If you want to build your assets or invest for your retirement, but do not have the time to manage your portfolio, then M1 is the perfect solution.  M1 won our review and comparison of the best Robo Advisors, and they have over $4 Billion in assets under management. Fullz regulated and secure M1 are a great choice for an automated advisor.

Firstrade: Best Free Broker With Retirement Portfolio Management

Firstrade won our Best USA Stock Broker Review by a landslide. With Firstrade, all stock trades are free, and they have the largest selection of commission-free ETFs in the industry.  Add to that their excellent stock portfolio tracking and retirement planning services, and you have a great option.

Account Pricing

Firstrade does not charge for using their services. You can open an account for free, they are, however, a broker, and you will need to fund your account to actually start trading. As you can see in the table below, Firstrade is leading the pack in terms of commission-free trading.

Table 1: Firstrade Commissions vs. Competitors

You can see that Firstrade has a substantial focus on having the best commissions in the industry.  Even though TD. Ameritrade, E-Trade & Schwab have now been forced to join the $0 Zero commissions bandwagon; Firstrade still offers the best value across stocks, options, and mutual funds.

Watchlist Tracking & Reporting

As with any broker, Firstrade provides free watchlist trading and reporting. This is all performed using Firstrade Navigator, which is a well designed and robust system with a lot of valuable information instantly available; this allows you to drill down into the details.

It is very customizable and also has a selection of widgets that you can embed into the dashboard.  Studies and stock chart indicators are, of course, also included.

Research & News

Firstrade provides free access to Zacks Research, Morningstar Research & Ratings, Breifing.com & Benzinga News (although not the real-time Benzinga PRO version).  These third-party services are quite valuable, and considering Firstrade offers very low commissions, they also add value through these services.

Other Services

Firstrade excels at being a great broker and leading the industry in zero cost trading.  However, its portfolio management service can be improved to cover portfolio Weighting & Rebalancing and Future Income & Dividend Reporting.  Also, Firstrade is not a Robo Advisory service, so do not expect Automated Portfolio Management and trading.

TC2000: Best Real-time Stock Portfolio Tracking & Scanning

Account Pricing

TC2000 is competitive on pricing with all premium stock market analysis software vendors; in fact, it is a leader in pricing, with only TradingView offering a similar price point. TC2000 has been voted as the best software for 25 years straight by the readers of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine.

You can download TC200 completely for free. There are a few limitations that are unlocked with the premium version we discuss below.  However, the Free version is extremely useful and packed with all the essential features you need to track your portfolio of stocks.

Watchlist Tracking

With TC2000, your watchlists are incredibly powerful. With hundreds of configurable columns for both technical indicators and fundamental financial indicators, whatever you want to build will be covered. Another great feature of the watchlist is that you have integrated market scanning, meaning you can sort and list your potential stocks based on if they meet certain criteria. For example, if you are looking for stocks with an EPS % increase of more than 20%, you can.

Research & News

TC2000 does not have integrated research reports like Stock Rover or Firstrade.  But it does enable you to scan the market for core financial data such as P/E, EPS, Earnings, Emplyees, or even insider Ownership.

TC2000 is perfect for scanning the entire market in a few seconds for the best fundamental setups of any company. In the Liberated Stock Trader PRO Training, I show how to find the best companies using TC2000.

Key TC2000 Stock Screener Criteria to Find High Growth Companies:

• Earnings as Percent of Sales 1-Year
• EPS Percent Change Latest Quarter
• EPS Percent Change Latest Year
• A Positive Operating Cash Flow
• Percent Change Revenue 1 Year
• Earnings Growth Rate 5 Years
• Trailing EPS
• Shares Outstanding

Profit & Loss Reporting

TC2000 does enable you to report on the profit and loss of individual stocks, including information on the purchase date, shares owned, and profit/loss.  However, when it comes to reporting on your entire portfolio profit and loss, the capability is simply not there.

Other Services

When it comes to portfolio performance reporting, rebalancing, asset allocation, and future income reporting, the functionality is simply not there with TC2000. TC2000 specializes in excellent technical analysis, charting, and entire market scanning based on your criteria. The stock watchlists are very good and provide solid tracking, but tracking on a portfolio level is missing.

Broker Integration

TC2000 Brokerage is a relatively new offering from Worden Brothers Inc.  This is a well-established company offering one of the best Stock Market Analysis Software Packages around.  The logical step for Worden Brothers was to expand into the Brokerage side of the business.

And boy, they did a good job.  They offer Stock Trade commissions at $4.95, less Merrill Lynch, and their Options trade fare even better at $2.95 + $0.65 per contract.

They surprisingly lead the pack in Margin Interest Rates.  When you buy a stock with margin, it enables you to leverage that stock with borrowed money.  This is traditionally where brokerage firms make a lot of profit through this lending.

However, TC2000 Brokerage does not take advantage of the client in this area and simply offers very low-interest rates of 3% to 4.2% on the margin loans.

The icing on the cake, though, is that you get to trade directly off the charts with TC2000.  TC2000 enables real-time fundamental and technical screening of the entire stock markets, including ETF’s, and lets you create indicators from market conditions easily.  Not only that, but the Options trading in TC2000 is also arguably one of the best in the industry.

TC2000 Brokerage only offers trading in Stocks, Options, and ETF’s, but is this is all you need, then this is a first-class operation that should meet your needs.

Yahoo: Best Free & Simple Portfolio Tracker

Yahoo Finance has improved a lot over the last two years.

Account Pricing

You will need a Yahoo account to get started with watchlist tracking.  Once you have registered, you will get access to some good basic watchlist and portfolio tracking functionality for free.  Yahoo does offer a premium service, which provides some extra reporting and analysis, but nothing compared to our winners Stock Rover & M1 Finance.

Yahoo Premium costs $49.99 per month, which is extremely expensive when compared to Stock Rover’s $27.99 per month.

Watchlist Tracking

Yahoo has updated its interactive charting experience, it is a clean experience and full screen, so now it is actually very good indeed.

With 114 different technical indicators, you are well covered with Yahoo Finance.  The interactive charts also now allow you to draw trendlines, linear regressions, and even quadrant lines.

A nice new addition is that Yahoo now provides real-time quotes and charts via the BATS system. Yahoo Finance is working hard to make their charting system a respectable alternative to other free vendors.

They have actually done something quite innovative.  You can now trade stocks through the Yahoo Finance charts.  Yahoo has partnered with “Trade.It“, who essentially provides an interface to transport trade requests to many of the mainstream US brokers.

This means, using Yahoo, you can trade stocks with your broker.  It is a nice feature, but if you have a brokerage account, you will already have access to real-time data, charts, and quotes and can trade directly with them, so it seems a little redundant, but still a step forward.

Research & News

Yahoo finance does provide a news aggregation engine and actually contribute original news via the Yahoo Finance news team. If you opt for Yahoo Finance Premium, you will get a good selection of analyst research reports. These are static reports which could be useful, but again for the price tag of $49.99 per month, it might not be worth it because most mainstream brokers offer research reports for free. In fact, Firstrade not only offers free stock trades but additionally research reports from both Zacks and Morningstar.

Profit & Loss & Performance Reporting

Yahoo Finance is able to connect to a wide variety of brokers and can then download your stock position data and then perform analytics on your portfolio, but again you will require the overpriced Yahoo Premium subscription. There is currently no functionality in Yahoo Finance Premium for Portfolio Weighting & Rebalancing or Automated Portfolio Management.

However, they do provide reporting on your Portfolio Asset Allocation per industry sector and dividend income reporting.

Stock Portfolio Tracking Review Summary

Our research has selected 5 excellent services that allow you to track your stocks. Stock Rover is the best stock portfolio management, screening, and research tool on the market today.  M1 Finance provides by far the best automated portfolio investing and management solution.  If you are looking for free stock trades and a great Roth IRA solution then Firstrade is your choice. TC2000 offers entire market scanning and a powerful watchlist solution for free.  Finally, Yahoo Finance offer a simple free watchlist tracking service for less demanding investors.

Further Reading

• Top 12 Best Stock Screeners & Scanners Review
• Top 10 Best Online Stock Brokers Review USA
• Top 10 Best Stock Market Trading Analysis Software Review

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