Efficiently Graphing a Stock Portfolio

Constantly watching stocks day-to-day is not a great idea, any more than buy and hold for years is any better. But watching the trends can be rewarding, and getting good information efficiently is critical, to stay informed.

One should keep an eye on not just the stocks that one owns, but overall market conditions, groups of related stocks, industries, etc. If you’re not willing to do that, look at other options.

Here I share how I organize myself for staying abreast of stocks and market conditions. The stocks shown here are examples, not recommendations. But if you’re interested in avoiding future financial immolation, you can start by reading this book.

I use the web site BigCharts.com for charting, because it lets me do certain things very efficiently. BigCharts.com has been around for years, has its share of poor design and bugs, but overall it gets the job done far better than all alternatives I’ve tried.

On the following pages, I go into the way I organize my stocks for efficient perusal.

Typical BigCharts.com web page