For stock investors, keeping a close eye on the performance of their portfolio is not just a good practice—it’s essential. Whether you’re a seasoned trader or a novice investor, monitoring your investments allows you to make informed decisions, identify trends, and ultimately maximize your returns.
Tracking the performance of your portfolio provides valuable insights into how your investments are performing relative to the market and your financial goals. It enables you to assess which stocks are thriving and which ones may need adjustment. By regularly reviewing your portfolio, you can spot potential opportunities and risks, allowing you to adjust your strategy accordingly.
While there are numerous tools available on the internet that offer portfolio tracking services, many of them come with a monthly subscription fee. However, there’s another option that’s often overlooked but equally effective: custom spreadsheets.
Custom spreadsheets offer investors a highly customizable and flexible way to track their portfolio performance. With a spreadsheet, you have complete control over the data you input and how it’s analyzed. You can tailor it to your specific needs, adding or removing metrics as necessary. Whether you prefer simple charts or complex formulas, a spreadsheet can accommodate your preferences.
This tool was born from my own frustration with scattered investment reports and a lack of consolidated dashboards. As a passionate long-term investor, I wanted a single place where I could track my progress, analyze different aspects of my portfolio, and make informed decisions. This Google Sheets tool is the result – it puts everything I need as an investor right at my fingertips.
Here’s a breakdown of the 7 tabs that the tool offers:
- Dashboard View: This is your central hub where you can see everything at a glance. 📈 Track your overall portfolio performance, including how your investments are doing month-to-month and year-to-year. See how much in dividends you’ve received from each stock you own, again broken down by month and year. Worried about diversification? This tool can show you how your portfolio is spread across different sectors, giving you peace of mind that you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket! 🧺 If you invest internationally, you can easily switch between € and 💲 for a truly global view of your portfolio. 🌎
- Mobile Dashboard: Life is busy, and you might not always be at your computer. The mobile dashboard gives you the same key insights as the main dashboard, but it’s formatted perfectly for your phone or tablet, allowing you to check on your investments on the go! 📱
- My Portfolio: Here’s where you can dive deeper into the nitty-gritty of your investments. See a detailed breakdown of each portfolio you have, including your current holdings and how much they’ve gained (or lost!) throughout the day and overall.
- Dividend Calendar: Dividends are like little gifts from your stocks, and this tool keeps track of them all! See a clear calendar showing the history of those sweet dividend payouts. Even better, it automatically highlights dividends you’ve already received, making it easy to see what’s already hit your account. 🤑 You can also analyze your dividend income by individual stock, month, year, and even see your total dividend haul!
- Closed Positions: Ever sold a stock? This tab keeps track of all your closed positions, showing you the gain or loss you made on each sale.
- Transactions: This is where you input all your investment activity. Easily track your deposits into each portfolio, as well as any dividends you receive.
- Data: This tab provides a high-level overview of your portfolios, showing the total invested amount and current market value for each one. The tool can monitor and analyze up to three different portfolios and the name of each portfolio can be customized from this tab. Furthermore, the timeframe of investments (i.e. Years) can also be customized.
This portfolio and dividend analyzer for Google Sheets empowers you to take control of your investments and become your own financial guru!
You can check my Portfolio & Dividend Analyser that is available on ETSY platform. As a blog reader, you can get it with a 60% discount by using the code: TRAVELINVEST60 or by clicking on the image below.
