We get questions all the time on what is the best investment portfolio management software. Just the other day, someone read my post about how we track our net worth and asked me a really simple question – how do I track our stock investments?

The short answer is… well, I don't.

Using Excel To Track Your Stock Portfolio – Calculating The Profit And Loss Of Your Trades. The most important reason you would want to use excel to track your stock portfolio is trying to calculate your profit and loss from each trade. To do this, open the spreadsheet with your transaction history. It should look something like this. Aug 28, 2020 Many of my individual stock holdings are now nearing their 10-year mark (acquired during the Great Recession) so it's all green across the board (and thus not particularly useful). Check out Google Finance. Final Verdict. You will be able to find a stock portfolio tracker from one of the options above.

I check my investments once a month when I update the spreadsheet, and then I don't look at it. I think of our investment money in time capsules so even if something were to happen, I don't want to be tempted to respond.

I still read financial news from time to time, I like to be aware of what's happening so if there is a big change, I'm not caught off guard. But that's mostly for psychological reasons. I aim never to touch the investments outside of rebalancing and other bookkeeping.

That said, how I track our investments has changed over the years. If you asked this question five years ago, there was a clear separation between the best of the best and the rest. Almost every tool used Yodlee to scrape your account information, so their features were all very similar. The difference was in the interface and how good that startup's designers were.

Nowadays, the separation is much bigger. Companies are using these free tools as a lure for something bigger (usually wealth management) and that has benefited us all.

Until recently, I was using Google Finance for a quick snapshot of my investments. Google killed the portfolio feature, which is always a risk with a free tool, so now I rely on Personal Capital for that snapshot and big-picture planning.

So what's the best tool for tracking investments? I'll tell you what I liked about each of them.

What Is A Stock Portfolio Tracker

First, what are we talking about when we ask for the best stock portfolio trackers? We want a tool that can collect all of our investments and give us an understanding of how it is performing. Much like personal finance apps, we want it to be as seamless as possible and give us the ability to quickly analyze our holdings in a variety of ways.

As we list the best options below, we take into account the cost of the subscription (if there is one), as well as the speed and usability of the platform.

Morningstar Portfolio Manager

I haven't been using it for a long time but Morningstar Portfolio Manager is a tool that has been around for ages. It gives you the ability to track all of your investments in one place, keep track of price changes, pull in star ratings and other Morningstar data, while giving you insights and research from Morningstar. The portfolio manager does not link up your accounts so you have to enter your data manually (which may be a plus if you're concerned about the security risk).

It's available to the free membership. If you are a premium member, you get access to more of the tools – but tracking is free. I realize that's all pretty vague but I wanted to include it in the list because they still offer it and there's something to be said for longevity.

The Best Stock Portfolio Tracker For Mac Os

The premium service has a 14-day free trial too so you can check it out for free for two weeks to see if it works for you. Also, through our link, you get up to $100 off the Morningstar Premium subscription price if you decide to subscribe after the trial. We have a more detailed review of Morningstar Premium here.

StockRover Portfolio Management

StockRover offers the ability to link up your brokerage account and use its powerful analysis tools using your specific brokerage data. You will be able to analyze your portfolio against benchmarks and make key decisions using data, rather than gut feel or guesstimates. If you don't want to connect your brokerage, you can enter it manually or use a spreadsheet import too. They support thousands of accounts including Vanguard, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, TD Ameritrade, Wells Fargo, E*Trade, Chase, and more.

Once you've set it up, you can get daily, weekly, or monthly reports showing performance as well as analyze it for a variety of metrics such as risk adjusted return, volatility, beta, IRR, Sharpe Ratio and more. It's comprehensive and far more detailed than many others on this list. It really depends on how in-depth you wish to go.

StockRover has a free tier but you get more when you sign up for the paid services.

Personal Capital

If you want a quick snapshot of your overall finances, this tool gives it to you pretty quickly once you connect all of your data sources. While I would say you shouldn't be checking your finances every minute of every day (because it's a waste of time), Personal Capital just makes it so that the waste of time takes a lot less actual time.

Personal Capital is safe, it has an Investment Checkup tool to give you an idea if your investments are on track, and it has a pretty good retirement calculator too based on your data. If you need budgeting, it can track expenses as well but it's not as good at that as dedicated budgeting tools.

SigFig

SigFig was the first investment tracker I ever used. I signed up age ago because it was the only one that connected with E*Trade, TradeKing and Vanguard; the three brokers I used at the time. The interface is very simple, connecting accounts is seamless, and they've expanded the tools they offer since I first used it.

Until I moved to Personal Capital, I was using SigFig because it has beautiful charts:

A peek at some of the charts (my data is all messed up because it's 5+ years old!)

I stopped using SigFig over ten years ago and since then they've added some new features I haven't explored extensively. They've also added financial advisors who can help you manage existing investments, monitor your portfolio, and help you come up with a plan. They're not pushy though, I've never been called about a consultation.

Google Sheets with Functions

If you like complete customization and your data secure on Google servers, you can create your own Google Sheet and pull data using a function provided by Google. The drawback is that you need to customize it and it'll be a very manual process, but you control it and it will always be free. You do run the risk of the GoogleFinance function changing underneath you but so far that hasn't happened in many years.

The core function to pull stock prices is simple:

=GoogleFinance('TICKER', 'price')

Where TICKER is the ticker symbol of the stock you're tracking. This data can be delayed up to 20 minutes.

If you want to check Amazon, you put this into a cell and it'll populate:

=GoogleFinance('AMZN', 'price')

The syntax of the function is available here. There is a huge menu of things you can do with the function, including show historical data, tables, etc. It's very solid and hasn't changed much, despite Google Finance being more tightly integrated into Google Search.

Google Finance

This was the first portfolio tracker I ever used.

I like Google Finance because the homepage gives you a handful of big stories (of which the headline alone gives you enough information) and then the portfolio tracking will pull in the major stories of your holdings.

I added my holdings as I acquired them, I removed them when I sold them, and I didn't use any of the cash tracking for those purchases and sales. What's nice about this set up is that it's easy so simple.

But they recently got rid of the Portfolio tracking features. You can still track companies, it just looks weird, you just won't be able to keep track of your basis.

I never used it to track my portfolio entirely, such as tracking cash inflows and outflows. I only used it to see how particular holdings were performing on a daily and overall level. Many of my individual stock holdings are now nearing their 10-year mark (acquired during the Great Recession) so it's all green across the board (and thus not particularly useful).

Final Verdict

You will be able to find a stock portfolio tracker from one of the options above.

If you want something relatively light and hands-off, Personal Capital can analyze your portfolio and help you understand whether you're on track to retire with the assets you need. Morningstar and Stock Rover exist for those who want more information and greater detail into their investment holdings.

And for the spreadsheet junkies, you always have Google Sheets or your own spreadsheets that you can customize to exactly what you want. It's all about what you hope to achieve and how much tinkering you need to do to get to it.

How do you track your investments?

Investment tracking software enables managing portfolios and accounts with ease. They enable creating, managing and tracking portfolios including brokers, stocks, bonds, assets, etc. They enable tracking the performance of various investments and helps by providing alerts. They provide interaction with bank accounts and enable paying bills on time as well as help in preparing budgets. They allow performing analysis of portfolio allocations easily. To know more about them one can search Google using “investment tracking software download”, “investment tracking software free”, “investment account manager” or “free stock portfolio tracker”.

InvestPlus

InvestPlus provides a comprehensive analysis of assets, liabilities and performs investment tracking. It supports more than fifty broker house bills, manages entire accounting system and allows exporting or printing balance sheets. It provides various reports related to trading.

Sharesight

Sharesight is investment portfolio management software which provides portfolio insights of investments by analyzing the industry trends, market trends and by type of investment. It allows importing the data and tracks them precisely.

Fund Manager

Fund Manager enables tracking funds, stocks, bonds, etc. It provides widespread reports and retrieves prices, transactions from brokers and the internet. It provides an interface for brokers and supports multi-currencies. It enables calculating bonds and managing clients, calculating fees.

Other Investment Tracking Software for Different Platforms

There are a lot of varieties of investment tracking software available for various versions of Windows, Mac Os, and Android. One can go through the below mentioned functions and features of these software which are provided individually for each platform. One should check for pre-requisite information and follow the instructions.

Best Investment Tracking Software for Android – Goodbudget

Goodbudget enables managing money and tracking expenses. It enables synchronization across devices and the web automatically, data backup facilities, splitting transactions related to expenses, adding income, checking envelope and account balances as well as allows transfer of funds.

Best Investment Tracking Software for Mac Os – Investoscope 3

Investoscope enables tracking multiple portfolios in multiple currencies. It allows updating Smart Watchlist dynamically, provides reports like capital gains, performance, etc.; and allows viewing asset allocations to various investment modes. It also provides technical indicators, grouping of data, etc.

Best Investment Tracking Software for Windows – Quicken 2016 Premier

Quicken provides a comprehensive financial solution by connecting to banks and creating budgets. It provides data security, accessing data from various devices, paying bills on time and enables eliminating duplicate transactions.

Most Popular Investment Tracking Software for 2016 is Stock Market Eye

This software helps in managing investments and accounts. It supports multi-currencies and managing groups of portfolios. It helps in building and tracking portfolios and provides portfolio performance reports. It provides watchlists, dynamic stock charts to view performance. You can also see Stock Market Software

The Best Stock Portfolio Tracker For Mac Pro

How to install Investment Tracking Software?

The Best Stock Portfolio Tracker For Mac 2017

Investment tracking software installation comes for various versions. To install them one should follow the installation notes provided in the software website or by going through the installation instruction document which comes along with software download. You can also see Sales Forecasting Software

The installation steps are simple to understand and easy to follow. One should also check for system requirement before downloading the software. For cloud-based software, separate installation instructions are provided by the vendor. One can get assistance from customer care if any issues persist with the installation.

Investment tracking software is the best tool for managing personal as well as business portfolios easily. They help the portfolio management industry by tracking investments of their clients smoothly. They provide a comprehensive analysis of investment holdings and produce detailed reports. They help investors and traders to perform businesses as well as transactions with ease.