For many investors, regular monitoring of their investment portfolio is essential to keep it finely tuned and in line with their goals. And January is a great time for investors to review what they already own before they start to focus on buying new investments to use up their annual individual savings account (Isas) and pension allowances before the end of the tax year on 5 April.
There is a wide range of online portfolio services available to help you do a January portfolio review and detox - from simple value trackers to websites stacked with high-tech, analytical tools. The following is a selection of some of the best available, in no particular order. I have reviewed and tested each by adding the funds in my Isa, along with a selection of shares and cash where appropriate.
FE Trustnet: "User-friendly and function-rich"
FE Trustnet provides a highly user-friendly and function-rich free portfolio tool. It can cater for many different types of investment and allows you to create one or more portfolios. You can add your investments quickly and easily.
Once uploaded, it gives you a detailed breakdown of sectors and regions across your portfolio and is the only free tool in this selection that gives an x-ray of your portfolio's asset class allocation. Some others that I tested use the term 'asset allocation' but it refers to investment type - for example, funds versus shares - not the asset class, for example, equities versus bonds. Monitoring asset class allocation is important if you want to maintain the right risk level in your portfolio.
The Trustnet tool also enables you to analyse your risk outlook using the FE 'riskometer'. This gives you a risk score for each investment and your overall portfolio; and compares that with the overall risk score of the FTSE 100 and other investments. There is a range of other useful information such as FE Crown ratings for each holding.
Note that measuring your own risk profile is controversial - while some financial advisers say services such as this are a good option for DIY investors, others contend that the process can be too simplistic and misleading.
Trustnet's free service also identifies the top 10 underlying holdings with weightings; and shows portfolio performance against a benchmark of your choice via a table and a chart. You can add other investments to the chart for comparison.
It shows what contribution each holding made or would have made over certain time periods; plus volatility, alpha, beta and Sharpe ratios for each. Reports are available to download as a PDF, though not in Excel.
Yet more features include alerts based on performance, news stories, and more detailed fund comparison tools including correlations.
It doesn't allow you to track your debts. And while it also doesn't go as far as tracking your bank accounts live, you could quickly fill them in manually, to get a complete view of your assets. If you want to invest, you can do so via Trustnet Direct.
Being free, this site does have adverts, but they are not overly intrusive.
Morningstar: "High level of technical detail"
Morningstar's Portfolio Manager could be a good choice for those who like a high level of technical detail.
This site has an abundance of detail and functionality, although some of it is only available to premium members. It offers a wide range of free tools to help filter and research funds and stocks to add to your portfolio.
The main screen shows the prices and weightings of holdings, plus performance figures from intraday to long term. Other data includes price to earnings and price to book ratios, average credit quality and net expense ratios. More free features include Morningstar ratings for funds and Morningstar OBSR analyst ratings for holdings in your portfolio or for those you may be considering. You can also click through to fact sheets that include details such as style boxes - which show where the holding fits in the spectrum of large to small cap and value to growth; and you can also read analyst research on funds, investment trusts and ETFs.
You can request newsfeeds and, helpfully, set an alert for holdings that fall above or below a certain percentage within your portfolio. This should help if you want to rebalance and maintain your targeted asset allocation.
On the downside, I found the writing so small and faint that I had to increase the zoom on my screen to read it. I also found the site more fiddly and less intuitive than some others.
For those willing to pay, there is a further portfolio monitoring service, which includes a large monthly report. This is packed with details, such as asset allocation, sector weightings, regional exposure, correlation matrix, returns analysis versus standard deviation and more. This also gives you scenario models of your portfolio's hypothetical future performance over the next five, 10, 20 and 30 years.
Premium members can also get a portfolio x-ray with more analysis on fees and a breakdown of diversification across regions, sectors and investment style.
Citywire Money: "Fast for simple performance tracking"
Citywire Money's My Portfolio does not provide any x-ray tools but is a good option if you want a fast and user-friendly tool for simple performance tracking purposes. The front page is very clear and intuitive. It requires minimal orientation and matches its available funds as you type in your search, speeding the portfolio creation process considerably - I was able to find and add my funds within seconds of hitting the page.
At a click, you can see performance of your holdings over one, three and six months and one, three and five years. Citywire shows you news stories about your holdings on the front page and you can also set it to email relevant stories to you when they are published. You can create six different portfolios in all.
The wider Citywire site has a wealth of news and information to help with fund and manager selection.
Investors Chronicle: "Summary of gains and losses plus value by asset type"
The Investors Chronicle My Portfolio service provides free portfolio tools, alerts and data. It is also simple and intuitive and it was relatively quick and easy to create my portfolio. There is also a handy help/FAQ page for inexperienced investors or anyone struggling with any aspect of the tool. When uploading, this site also shows you options as you type in a search, which saves a lot of time.
Once created, the screen shows you a summary of gains and losses across your portfolio in total and percentage terms over a broad range of time periods. Pie charts shows you value by asset type and by exchange country. A line chart shows performance of your portfolio against an index of your choice.
The screen shows news stories from Investors Chronicle and the FT about companies in your portfolio. You can also tailor your alerts, manage dividends and view transactions. There is an option to download all your portfolios in CSV format.
The Investors Chronicle site also provides a wide range of news, analysis, ideas and information about the wider investment world.
This Is Money: "More weighted towards shares than funds"
Thisismoney.co.uk's Power Portfolio tool allows you to create multiple portfolios and to add investments from almost any kind of vehicle from funds to shares, cash, spread bets, exchange traded funds, commodities and futures. I found the layout and navigation a little messy to begin with, but there is an instructional video showing exactly how to use it on the front page, plus lots of other help and explanation.
Once created, this tool shows a breakdown of your portfolio's investment type, for example, percentage of unit trusts versus shares. You can see recent news about companies in your portfolio; and there is a series of performance tables. It shows returns from one day to three years. Another function is a heat map showing movements of the stocks in your portfolio for the day. Yet another provides background research on each investment. It seems that the analysis on this site is more weighted towards shares than funds for example.
Yahoo Finance: "Choose from 86 pieces of information for each holding"
The My Portfolios tool in Yahoo Finance portfolio allows you to create a portfolio of funds and/or shares very quickly and easily. It shows daily movements, against an index for comparison; trading volumes; and new stories about your shares.
It has a dashboard giving a range of information about each share such as price changes, yield, price to earnings ratio, average daily volume markets capitalisation and EBITDA as default. In addition, a major benefit of this tool is the ability to add 15 custom fields, choosing from a possible 86 pieces of information that you can track for each holding. The information is mostly geared towards shares.
You can also drill down into more detailed information about each company that you invest in or are considering.
On the downside, the tool does not provide any x-ray or cross portfolio analysis, such as on asset class allocation. Oddly, it also does not total all your holdings for you. And the range of investments seems to be more limited than some - you cannot, for example, add a cash deposit or a bank account.
Investment platforms: "Automatic feed in of your investments"
Several direct investment platforms - such as Trustnet Direct and Hargreaves Lansdown – offer portfolio analysis tools, which have the benefit of feeding in your actual investments automatically.
If you invest via Hargreaves Lansdown's Vantage service, for example, it enables you to analyse your portfolio according to investment type, asset class - including of underlying holdings in funds - and currency allocation. For shares in your portfolio, you can drill down into industry sector and market capitalisation. For fixed interest, you can analyse maturity profile across your portfolio. HL's X-ray tool also provides a regional breakdown and geographical heat map of investments; plus graphical performance analysis of comparing shares, funds or both.
www.hl.co.uk/investment-services/vantage-service/portfolio-analysis-demo
www.trustnetdirect.com/portfolio/demo/summary
Meanwhile, Bestinvest has launched a free portfolio analysis tool called First. This gives feedback on the volatility of your portfolio, how well balanced the asset allocation is versus Bestinvest's own models and a thumbs up/down assessment of each investment you hold.
