Today, Wikinvest is launching its streaming portfolio tracker. It looks cool. It's like the Mint.com of investment account tracking. This dynamic investment portfolio tracker is automated, allowing you to keep track of how your investments are doing, using information from your trading accounts. Wikinvest didn't pay me to write about this, but I did get a cool product demo and speak with Patrick Cushing, the product manager at Wikinvest.
"Most portfolio trackers are hard to maintain over the long term because you have to go in and enter everything manually. That's time consuming to begin with. But then you have to go in and manually enter trades as well," Cushing points out. "What we've done is set up a dynamic tracker that can pull all of your investments automatically from your investment accounts, much like personal finance programs get information from your bank accounts."
Cushing says that the security is bank-level security, offering the same level of security that Quicken Online or Mint.com offer to their users. "We are very serious about this," Cushing says. "The portfolio is one way, so you can't affect any of your accounts by what you do while in the tracker."
The real value is in the ease with which you can keep up with your portfolio, and the way that it automatically updates your trades each day -- once your investment accounts settle and record at the end of the day. "You can customize your view so that you can look at your holdings by account, industry, performance, or any other way," Cushing says. He also points that powerful analytics allow you to consider a number of characteristics of your investments, including book value, P/E rations, dividends and more. Drag and drop makes personalization simple.
"Our portfolio tracker can also help you compare your performance to the market, including major indexes. And, because we have access to transactional data, all of the analytics are personalized to your own portfolio," Cushing points out. "We also provide you a look at your real returns. We factor in deposits, fees, dividends and more to help you see how your portfolio is really performing, rather than just giving you price gains or losses."
If you want to research other stocks, or do additional research on your own investments, you can get a personalized news feed. "We offer a nice clean feed from a variety of sources that offer news related to your holdings. You can also add stocks to your watchlist and see how adding them might affect your portfolio -- although you won't be able to buy them from the portfolio tracker."
Wikinvest's portfolio tracker is completely free. If you are interested in the easy way to keep tabs on your portfolio, this is a good place to start, with its comprehensive analytics and helpful, real-time look at exactly what your holdings are doing.
Profile: Miranda Marquit
Miranda is a financial journalist. Her work has appeared in a number of publications, online and off, and been mentioned by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NPR, and Consumerist. Miranda is a contributor to U.S. News & World Report, and writes at the blog Planting Money Seeds. She is also a panelist for the Money Mastermind Show, and the Money Tree Investing Podcast.
