With online portfolio tracking tools, investors can see exactly how their investments are prospering. Many large news organizations provide portfoliotracking services that can make your portfolio tracking very convenient if you already use one or more of these news sources. The portfolio tracking functions of online news organizations generally require the security’s ticker symbol, quantity you purchased, purchase price, and date of purchase. In return, your portfolio tracker shows today’s delayed market price, today’s change, market value of your shares, the value of your investment, your gain or loss, and the percentage of the return. The following sections profile a few examples of online news organizations’ portfolio trackers.

Business news
Many online business news organizations provide portfolio tracking. Getting your investment news and tracking your investments at the same site is like one-stop shopping and can be a real timesaver. You can read the news and check on your securities at the same time. Check out the following sites:

• CBS MarketWatch offers (with your free registration) a program that enables you to create an unlimited number of portfolios and to track up to 200 ticker symbols for options, mutual funds, and stocks on all the major exchanges in each portfolio. You can also customize price and value views to display the data you want to see first. Prices are automatically updated every five minutes.
• FT.com is a handy online portfolio tracker if you’re trading in a variety of currencies. You can track 24 currencies on a number of exchanges. The Financial Times allows you to analyze your allocations, as well as link to financial data and news. A convenient online currency converter tallies up your international gains or losses. The portfolio tracker is free with your registration.
• New York Times lets you set up or see the status of your portfolio (with your free registration). Go to the Business Section and click Stock Portfolio. To set up your portfolio, just enter the securities that you own or want to own by inputting the ticker symbol, amount of shares, commission paid, and date of purchase. The portfolio program does the rest. PC Quote provides the quotes, and The New York Times provides the free service.

Portal portfolio management
Portals are Web sites that are designed to be the Internet user’s first window onto the Web — the first page that comes up when the user accesses the Web. Often, you can personalize portals so that you can access news, sports, current portfolio data, or interest rate information before moving on to other sites. In the following sections, I profile two examples of portals with free portfolio tracking.

Yahoo! portfolio management
Yahoo! features a personalized portfolio program. To use the free portfolio, you need to set up an account with My Yahoo!. Click the Log In link that appears on the Portfolio line and then click Create an Account. Click the Edit link that appears and enter a portfolio name. Add the ticker symbols of your investments, separated by commas where indicated. You can also enter indexes like the S & P 500 (SPX) for comparison purposes. You can use the same ticker symbol to record separate purchases. Enter or edit the number of shares or purchase prices by clicking the Enter More Info button at the bottom of the page.

Quotes are delayed by 15 minutes for NASDAQ and 20 minutes for other exchanges. Portfolio management information includes company ticker symbol, price at the last trade, amount of price change at last trade, trading volume, number of shares held, the total value of the issue, dollar and percentage of change between the purchase price and the current value, amount paid per share, dollar capital gain or loss, and percentage of capital gain or loss.

The program provides charts, news, research, SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) filings data, and related information. Recent headlines that link to news stories about your portfolio investments appear at the bottom of the page. You can get your information by signing in on any computer (and use the sign-out feature to make certain that others can’t pry).

You can select a nontable version of the portfolio’s data, choose to have all portfolio data downloaded to a spreadsheet, and retrieve detailed quotes for each investment. You can customize the portfolio by deciding to sort information alphabetically, use a small font, or display the portfolio by using detailed quote information rather than basic quote data.

Detailed quote information includes last trade (date and time), change (dollars and percent), previous closing price, volume, the day’s price range, 52-week range, and bid, ask, and open prices. Also included are ex-dividend dates, earnings per share, P/E ratio, last dividend per share amount, and yield. Charts of the security’s price for the last three months, year, two years, five years, and maximum number of years are available.

You can view your portfolio in a floating window, which lets you track your portfolio even when you leave My Yahoo!. Just click the stacked pages icon in the top-right corner of the portfolio module. If you get tired of seeing your portfolio, click the X to close the floating window.

Excite
Excite is a portal that lets you customize more than any other portal Web site (after you enter your zip code and e-mail address). You can choose your favorite links, decide how the page looks, pick which news stories will be listed first, set select reminders, and more. You can select stocks to track and create multiple portfolios.

The first portfolio view shows only the ticker symbol, current price, and percentage of change since the last closing price. The portfolio tracker provides alerts, information on the most active stocks, and a market update. The full portfolio screen shows the ticker symbol, current price, today’s change, percentage of change, volume, shares you own, gains or losses, and links to company news and chats. If you need to look up a company’s ticker symbol or find a delayed quote, Excite includes the service.

Portfolio management alerts
Many Web-based portfolio management programs offer registered users free daily updates on their portfolios. Investors can receive news, alerts, and closing prices on all the securities listed in their online portfolios. Investors usually enter their preferred e-mail address and complete a confirmation process. Many programs allow investors to set the criteria for specified alerts. For example, if the price change of a certain security changes by more than 5 percent in a day, an alert is automatically launched to notify the investor of the change. The following are a few examples of portfolio alerts:

• Marketocracy believes there is no one solitary path to success in the stock market. The common destination is to learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the market environment. To that end, Marketocacy offers Marketscope Newsletter, stock alerts, weekly insights, and daily stock information. There is a free 30-day trial. The subscription price for this premium level research is $60 for three months or $180 for one year.
• MSN Money Deluxe is a free downloadable program that takes a few minutes to download with a 56 Kbps modem. At the Investor home page, click on Portfolio in the header. You can save personalized views of your portfolio, use the MSN Stock List to track symbols, import stock screener results to a watch account in your portfolio, see an analysis of your portfolio and easily add new symbols to your account. Among other things, the MS Money Deluxe launches e-mail alerts delivered to MSN Messenger, Windows Messenger, e-mail, or your mobile device. Alerts can be based on stock or mutual fund ticker symbols to notify you of changes in price, volume, and more.
• SmartMoney.com offers intraday stock alerts. Get notified as soon as your stock hits your specified price target, volume target net change, and more. You can add, edit, and remove alerts for immediate use. You can even set up multiple alerts each. For example, you can be notified when your stock goes up or down 10 percent and when it hits a 52-week high. There is a free two-week trial. Subscriptions start at $5.95 per month for delayed quotes ($59.95 per year) and $10.95 per month for real-time quotes ($109.00 per year).
• Stock Alerts offers custom alters for a variety of events and periodic reports on stocks and portfolios. Delivery is to desktop e-mail, pagers, cell phones, and any other e-mail capable Short Message Service (SMS) device. Messages are in HTML or plain-text formats. There are three subscription levels. The free subscription is one report or watch, one portfolio, a maximum of ten lots per portfolio, total of two deliveries per day, a total of three destinations for messages per day, and ten messages archived to the Web. The mini-subscription is $29.95 per year and includes five watches or reports, one portfolio, 25 maximum delivers per day, 50 delivers per day, three destinations, and 15 recent messages archived on the Web. The full subscription is $84 per year and includes 20 watches or reports, three portfolios, 50 lots per portfolio, a maximum of 50 deliveries per day, five destinations for messages, and 50 recent messages archived on the Web.