Hello all,
After close to 30yrs I have changed brokerages. It worked for me for a long time even if it had quirks that I delt with. Recently, they make some random process steps that they couldn’t explain, and it started to cost me money.
It all added up to too much, so I moved my account over to SoFi as I already had some banking there.
The problem now is, SoFi is not designed for active investors. (You can’t tell until you have an account there, and they get good reviews from the ‘standard’ financial sites.)
Basically, while I got the other functionality I was looking for, I lost the ability to just have my profile open most of the day so I could scan news, I could watch option prices, I could track trends, etc.
I’m wondering if anyone has found a place to do things like…not get logged out after five minutes, maybe set up a watch profile that actually tracks numbers like date and cost of purchase and current returns, or a place that would then provide news of the items on your watch list and related companies?
I solved some problems by moving, but seems I ran into others that will impact my ability to track the markets, sentiment, hype, etc…
Maybe not what you’re looking for, but I have a portfolio (watch list) set up on MarketWatch. Select each ticker and enter your holdings and it provides a real time snapshot of the daily price action and links to news.
I also track my portfolio in greater detail on a Google spreadsheet. Again, I enter the ticker and share count, and use the import function to pull in real time data from Google Finance and Finviz. I’ve include cost basis, yield, purchase date, performance, and many other things over time.
Obviously my account numbers, brokerage, personal data, or passwords don’t appear anywhere on either of the above.
I trade with Fidelity which has great information but I don’t linger on the site or stay logged on. I’m not sure of any financial site that won’t log you out after a period of inactivity for obvious reasons.
To add to what LE already stated, it is probably better to do your monitoring via a 3rd party site. With so much fraud happening these days, I would imagine most online exclusive sites (vs brick and mortar companies) are more strict with their security.
On a tangent, my son opened his first investment account at SoFi but we moved it to e*Trade once we learned that SoFi does not allow for some options trading.
I have no choice because my trading portfolio is inside a 457(b) retirement account and the trading part is done with Charles Schwab which I am perfectly happy with.
Having an iPhone gives me the “Stocks” app which is on my home screen with my portfolio’s stocks selected and I also make use of Yahoo’s “Finance” app (I think that’s what it is called) where I can easily see the pre-market and post-market gains/losses and Futures. I can easily go in and trade with Charles Schwab app including pre and post trades.
I am lame and set in my ways somewhat…i only need basic views, so have 3-4 watchlists on Yahoo Finance plus 2 that mimic my actual brokerage portfolio holdings.
I rarely log into the brokerage sites unless i plan on buying or selling a stock, or moving funds, etc
You can set up custom views, and i like to see the usual: % chg, day range, 52 wk range, mkt cap, PS, PE, forward PE, volume, and then i also like % off 52 wk high and % off 52 wk low.
While i dont track options, you can add options to your watchlist and track them along w stocks and indexes, etc