How to Follow Your Investments

Following your investments can be difficult, especially when your investments are diversified and spread across many different investment vehicles. There are many resources that are available to traders and investors alike to track the returns of any investment. Keeping track of personal finances with a large stock portfolio can be tedious, but the profit and triumphs of making money are entirely worth the time.

Stock brokers Can Save You Time

First and foremost, your stock broker, whether a discount or full-service broker, should be able to give you the performance of any one or a number of investments at any given time. Discount brokers will allow you to track the performance of every investments and make it easy by showing the profit or loss in dollars, percentage points, or even its performance contrasted against a major index over time. A ledger should be available from any broker that will do the calculations for you, saving you time and allowing you to focus on investing.

Most Daily Newspapers Offer Stock Quotes

Better than your broker, the daily results of the stock market are generally posted in the newspapers. Even small, local papers should offer some kind of mini-board that will give information on how your stock market holdings performed at yesterday's closing bell. Generally, these listings will show the high and the low, as well as the closing price and the total change from open to close. Some newspapers will highlight hot stocks or hot stock picks that have done well in the past days. Some information on volume and even the amount of the dividend might be listed, depending on your local paper.

Investor-Oriented Newspapers are a Great Resource

There are many specialized newspapers published solely for the stock market and personal finance. For example, the Wall Street Journal or Investors Business Daily are dedicated to business news and the performance of various stocks and investment vehicles. Subscriptions to these newspapers are generally much more expensive than a local paper, but give plenty of investment advice and tables to help improve your investing. Plus, the news sections will help you keep up to date with critical stock market developments. But the best benefit with stock market newspapers is for mutual fund investors; these papers are some of the very few that also track the results of mutual funds. If you have large holdings in a mutual fund and want to see the day to day performance, the small monthly cost of having one of those two magazines sent to your door is one of the best investments you can make.

The Internet Offers Real-Time Investing Resources

Tracking investments is also made easier by the variety of real-time tools available online. On the NASDAQ website, you can look up the results of any stock, and even get facts and figures on figures like the float, the amount of short interest, and the current price. Online tools are readily available everywhere and help an investor keep track of real-time stock prices.  The real-time information is very important for short-term traders, especially if you rely upon small price movements to enter or exit the market.  Most brokers will even send text messages on the status of your positions for a small fee or free to some investors who make a certain number of trades every month. Keeping up with your investments is easy, but keeping profitable is the difficulty.