When it comes to investing passively, many tools have been introduced but are hard to surpass the ‘tool of tools’: the spreadsheet.
Typical investors that have long time horizons and do not want to be bothered by daily fluctuations start by building their spreadsheet. With the latest functions available, they can even retrieve real-time stock data. However, there are limitations to such a spreadsheet. In this article, we will look at tools for passive investing and zoom into a stocks tracker as a good option for passive investing.
Limitations of the holy spreadsheets
Although spreadsheets are seen as the holy grail to many passive investors, there are several disadvantages. First off, they do not automatically add transactions conducted to the sheet, this needs to happen manually. For example, passive investors set transactions for a fixed price at a fixed date every month. However, when a new transaction takes place, the price of the respective asset is different every month. This requires the investor to manually enter the transaction into the sheet. This also holds for withdrawing funds from your account, as well as dividend pay-outs.
How can stocks tracker help
These problems can typically be overcome by the use of a stocks tracker. This is an application that can integrate with your brokers securely through the use of APIs. This enables you to have a holistic overview of all your assets across brokers. Transactions and dividends are automatically included in the overview, allowing you to sit back and monitor even more passively.
Set notifications for news that matters
Like social media applications, checking a stocks tracker can become an addiction. This will result in more emotional decision-making and the potential loss of returns. Therefore, you should leverage the functionality of the application to become a passive investor. For example, you can set up push notifications to receive news related to your stocks. This can be helpful when quarterly results are published or when dividends are paid out. Next to that, you do not need to monitor your application any longer.
What about crypto?
Crypto is a new type of asset that is becoming part of the portfolio for many. This also needs to be integrated into a holistic overview, similar to a stocks tracker. This can be accomplished through a crypto tracker, which allows you to integrate with exchanges and wallets. Luckily, the process does not need to be cumbersome. Many stocks tracker applications also allow you to integrate your crypto into their view. For people that are actively participating in staking or in the consensus mechanisms, these trackers are the perfect solution. They can simply continue to stake and validate transactions, as the funds remain inside their wallets. No need to move to a broker or exchange. As the inclusion of funds solely happens based on the Public Key, it is entirely safe to use. You can also create separate portfolios within the application to split your assets and also within assets (e.g., growth versus blue-chip stocks).
