Tag: software

Choosing a Share Portfolio manager – part II

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OK, so from narrowing my choice down to four (Stockopedia, Sharesight, Yahoo Finance and Google Finance) I’ve immediately managed to rule out Yahoo and Google for a couple of reasons:

Very basic functionality. No obvious way to account for cash or dividends or transaction costs. These I’d class as essential to managing a Portfolio. I’ve done a quick Google (!) on both and cannot see any way of doing this, so have abandoned them, each with one test transaction.

Sharesight

So far:

  • + Automatically adds dividends – nice

  • – Need upgraded package to manage cash balances
  • – Portfolio only shows % returns, not £££. Have to drill down into a share to see this. Correction. Just fond a toggle to do this.
  • – Cannot benchmark against an index, only an ETF
  • – Cannot configure columns in Portfolio
  • – Can’t check out Reporting without upgrade
  • – CSV imports are limited to buys and sells. My existing Portfolio is stuffed with other transactions, so looks like they won’t be importable
  • – Not obvious from a Portfolio summary that a share has a comment note made

I *think* I can produce a report showing each shareholding’s portion of the whole Portfolio, but it’s in the Premium section and I can’t actually see any examples in their Help section, or Online.

Stockopedia

So far:

  • + Built into my current subscription so no extra cost
  • – Cannot produce a Report showing % of Portfolio per share
  • – Can add a note, but it’s not visible from the Portfolio summary

As I wasn’t happy, I did run another Google search and came up with:

Morningstar – very limited features

ThisIsMoney – ditto

Trustnet – Not a good User Interface (UI) and when I tried to add CEY it wasn’t on the list and therefore I couldn’t add it.

In the end I have plumped for Stockopedia in that it has decent functionality and I’m already paying for the subscription. It’s taken me a few hours to import my data from StockMarketEye – quirks at both end of the Export / Import process, but significantly quicker than manually typing in all those transactions again. reporting on this Blog may look a bit different. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it as, at the moment I have no spare cash for purchases and nothing looks worthy of being sold. Watch this space.

Choosing a Share Portfolio manager – part I

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What Share Portfolio manager should I choose?

At the moment I use Stockmarket Eye which, when it is working, is great for my needs (live-ish prices, charting, historic data, multiple portfolios). However, it has not been working for one reason or another since May and there is no sign of a solution on the horizon.

I have subscribed to Stockopedia, which has Portfolio Management amongst its features. However it has nowhere near as many Portfolio features as Stockmarket Eye. The hunt is on for a new package.

Requirements for a Share Portfolio Manager package:

  • Live and historic data for charting. Live with a delay is absolutely fine for my purposes.
  • Multiple portfolio support
  • Index comparisons
  • Gain / loss calculations
  • Colour coding for gains / losses etc. You don’t realise how helpful this is until you don’t have it.
  • Reasonable price – not expecting something for free, although a limited free trial is really helpful to get a feel for the features.

The (very) short list

After a quick Google I’ve come up with the following:

  • SharePad by Sharescope
  • Sharesight
  • Yahoo Finance
  • Google Finance

SharePad

This appears to be very akin to my current Stockopedia Subscription. Prices, charting, analysis, ratios and screens etc. Portfolio Management seems to be a very small subset. Parked for now. £32 / m or £347 / y

Sharesight

Touts itself just as a Portfolio tracker.

Automatically track price, performance and dividends from 240,000+ global stocks, crypto, ETFs and funds. Add cash accounts and property to get the full picture of your portfolio – all in one place.

Pricing plans: There are 4, starting at Free forever

  • Free forever. £0. 1 Portfolio, 10 holdings
  • Starter £11 / £8.25. 1 Portfolio, 30 holdings
  • Investor £19 / £14.25 4 Portfolios, unlimited holdings
  • Expert £24 / £18 10 Portfolios, unlimited holdings

(pricing is monthly or monthly equivalent if you pay annually)

There are other features, too such as custom groups, so you can group your holdings by (say) Industry, country, investment type etc.

As I run two Portfolios, that means it will be the ‘investor’ package anyway, but actually I am currently on 30 holdings. If they count the same holdings in both portfolios as double then I’m above the 30 limit as well, anyway.

I’m going to subscribe to the free version just to have a play and report back.

Yahoo Finance

Interestingly (or not), Yahoo Finance is the source of the data for Stockmarket Eye and is also the source of its current angst as it has changed the way SME can extract data.

Either way, Yahoo Finance is a pretty comprehensive source of financial data so I’ll set up a parallel Portfolio to Sharesight and see how they compare.

Google Finance

Google also offers Portfolio services, so I’ll give that a try, too.

I’ll report back in Part II, but if anyone knows of any other UK-supporting share Portfolio management software, do let me know in the comments, below. Please don’t suggest anything Excel-based, however good as I really don’t trust the data capabilities. I would much rather pay for dedicated software.

Stockmarket Eye – software for Portfolio Management

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Update 2024. SME has closed down. The new Owner realised that he had bitten off more than he could chew. I’ve moved to Airtable and Stockopedia (see elsewhere) so I have removed all links to the Software.

It’s a shame. It was a really useful and comprehensive package.

Prior to 2015 I used to use a spreadsheet to manage my Portfolios (didn’t we all). That is quite labour intensive if it’s not a ‘Buy and forget’ type of Portfolio. Even if it is, it is still a pain to update with current prices to see how your Returns compare to your chosen index.

I have also tried some of the online Portfolio facilities provided by, for example, ADVFN. ADVFN is a fantastic site for raw information on everything and I have been a user for decades. The Portfolio Management section is not as user-friendly as many packages. I still use it pretty much daily for that nerdy blow-by-blow share price tracking, however.

In 2015 I trialled the Stockmarket Eye package (SME). This is specifically designed around Portfolio Management. You get a 30 day trial and after that it’s currently just $75 a year (about £60 at current rates). Personally, I think that’s a bargain. I’ve been subscribed since about 2016.

You can see typical reports it can produce on these pages. All the stats I have created in my Blogs have come from the Reporting features of the package.

Features that I use regularly

  • Buy, sell shares. Spare splits
  • Dividend recording
  • Cash management recording – fees, commissions interest etc
  • Multiple Portfolios and Watchlists. I have set one up for my ISA, one for my SIPP and I also have a Watchlist one. Reporting can be separate or consolidated.
  • Charting. SME has live links to current and historic share prices so producing a share price chart is a doddle. You can have different styles such as Line, Candlestick etc and you can compare prices against other shares or indices.
  • Reporting. See the top of this Blog or my gain/loss calculations for a typical example. All I do is set the time period and it does the rest.
  • Cloud-based As long as I keep it synchronised I can access the software from my PC, my laptop or my phone (there is a free App).
  • Configurability. The main display is based around each share entry and all columns can be ordered or hidden. Here’s the example from their website:

This isn’t meant to be a massive review of SME, but if you are looking at setting up and Managing a Portfolio, do take advantage of their free trial and have a play.

Reasons to buy

  • Cheap at £75 a year. You can easily recoup that in time saved by not using a spreadsheet
  • Highly configurable
  • New ownership of the software with plenty of plans moving forwards
  • Free Trial anyway – nothing to lose!

Quirks

  • It would be nice if it was truly cloud-based rather than local copies that can be synchronised. Synchronisation is easy enough but it’s easy to forget to save if you make a change. A cloud-based version downloads the latest every time, and any changes get automatically saved back up to the cloud.
  • The Watchlists have a subset of the columns available to the Portfolios. It would be nice to have them all, no reason why this shouldn’t be the case.
  • All data are dependent on the source they are using. I have one share, for instance, where the historic data prices are a factor of 100 out where someone assumed the values were pence rather than pounds 9or vice versa). Make some charts look funny, but that is probably out of SME’s control.

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This Blog must in no way be construed as investment advice. I’m not an Advisor, I’m just a Private Investor that takes an interest in Stocks and Shares as a way of increasing my standard of Living & having a bit of fun. Feel free to comment. All comments are Moderated before publication, keep them relevant, short and interesting otherwise they won’t be published. My Blog, my Rules.

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