You can set up more than one portfolio, and even create a "watch list" portfolio to follow stocks or funds that you're considering buying. Once you've set up your portfolio, the next step is to use the free tools that help you go beyond just "tracking" your investment performance, to help you understand the characteristics of your portfolio and warn you against over-concentrating in just one category of stocks.
Tools you can use
Now the fun begins. You can sign up for a daily e-mail service, letting you know how your portfolio is performing, along with links to news articles of interest. For example, if your security moves up or down 10 percent in one day, has a change in its Morningstar Rating, or has a change in fund manager, you'll be notified. Because Morningstar tracks more than 22,000 different funds and 24,000 stocks, the data is readily available.
Beyond tracking your portfolio, and beyond instant updates, there is an incredible range of help in dealing with your portfolio. And you don't need to be an expert to use these tools to make adjustments to your portfolio. Under the portfolio tab, just click on "Tools." That's where you'll learn a lot more about what's inside your portfolio and how all your investments work together -- or against each other!
The most useful feature of the Morningstar portfolio tracker is Portfolio X-Ray. To get the full benefits of this service, you must be a premium member. (But there is a limited Instant X-Ray feature available to all users.) Once you've created a portfolio, click on the X-Ray tab, and this feature looks inside your mutual funds to see the investments that each holds.
Next step under "Tools" is to click on "Asset Allocation." This lets you see the overall tilt of your portfolio -- whether to large cap companies or smaller companies, whether toward companies considered growth-style or value-style investments. It reveals how your sectors (consumer goods, health care, financial services, technology, etc.) stack up against the weighting of the Standard & Poor's (S&P) 500 Stock Index. You even get a report on the fees and expenses you're paying, compared with the average mutual fund. There's another feature of the premium membership called "stock intersection." It actually looks at individual stocks inside your mutual funds to let you know where their holdings overlap.
This may be more than you ever wanted to know about your investment portfolio. But if you want to converse with others, you can even join the "Discussion" and get helpful ideas or commiseration. Burying your head in the sand about your investments will only make your investment picture more gloomy. Be brave. Take a very close look at your investments, and you'll be better off in the long run. That's the Savage Truth.