How to Use Technology to Your Advantage When Learning About Finance

Before the advent of the internet, it was close to a full-time job if you wanted to stay on top of your investments. Today, we have many types of technology that are automating these tasks so that we can spend more time living our lives and less time working on our retirement nest egg.

Tracking Investments –

One of the most important parts of investing in the stock market is tracking your investments. Stock market investors are encouraged to use market data tools to research their investments. It’s best to do research before buying a stock so you know what you own. Some people like to see everything in real time on their cell phone in an app, and others like to see their investment portfolio on their laptop or desktop. 

Security for Using Tracking Apps –

If you are going to track your investments online, some of the best advice from ZDNet
on how to secure your phone include: 

• Using a password
• Using Google’s two-step authentication on your Google Apps
• Downloading from the Google Play Store exclusively, if you own an Android
• Never using public Wi-Fi for secure transactions

Apps for Investment Tracking –

The Morningstar app is considered one of the best if you are mainly considering tracking investments. It will allow you to set up an online portfolio and access their stocks and mutual fund ratings. The yearly fee to use the app is $199, but you can test it out for 14 days for free.

The Yahoo! Finance app is free, if you don’t mind putting up with ads. The app allows you to track investments, create watch lists and get stock quotes and financial news, as well as manage your stocks and shares ISA portfolios. You can also move beyond the stock market into currency, bond, commodity and futures trading.

Another free app for tracking stocks is called Mint. It serves a dual purpose as budgeting software and allows you to track investments. Mint is free, just like Yahoo’s app. Mint is a bit less robust than the other offerings, but it will allow you to track your stock accounts, mutual funds, 401(k)s and IRAs. It will tell you how your accounts perform when compared to market measures. It will also let you see if you are paying too much in fees relative to performance.

Online Investment Tracking –

If you like to see what is happening with your investments without the eye strain, there are also online desktop apps for investment tracking. Some are free, while others are a bit pricey.

According to The Balance, you can use client tracking of your investment portfolio. If you are a client with an investment firm, they often have a portal that will allow you to track all of your investments, even your investments that might be held at another brokerage.

Also, the Mint.com budgeting and investing app is available online, so you can use it with your desktop computer as well as your mobile phone. The same is true of the Morningstar investing app. The Yahoo! Finance app can be downloaded for Windows 8 and RT computers in the Windows store at no charge.

Videos –

There are many sources of investment videos on YouTube. Some are general videos that educate investors on the basics. Others evaluate the current market conditions and provide market news and recommendations. So, you can look for market updates like these videos and should find a wealth of information.

News Sources –

Investors need to stay abreast of the true state of the world’s governments and the economy. We also have seen how important it is to be aware of the weather and its effects upon our investments. Just think, for example, of those who trade in commodities that have experienced the dual issues of the trade wars and the weather severely impacting their investments.

The news sources that will serve you best will provide unbiased and accurate reporting. The key is to vet your sources carefully and weed out those who aren’t there to tell you the truth.

Over time, if you sweep your net out for diverse sources of local, state, national and world news, you will amass those you can trust. Rather than having to click on each one every day in order to stay informed, you can gather their RSS feed information and paste it into an RSS feed reader, like Feedly. Then, you just fire up your Feedly account and click on relevant information from your news sources that you have curated.

The nice thing about the RSS reader is you can place your blogs and YouTube subscriptions there as well, making it a one stop shop for your news and investment information.

Tracking Individual Companies and Buy and Sell Indicators –

For the individual stocks you either are holding or tracking, you can set Google Alerts to tell you when the company comes up in the news, when the stock hits a certain level or when some other event occurs.

For investors in many sectors right now, the trade war issue is definitely something to set on one’s Google Alert because it can have an impact upon stocks that you may consider buying at another time, even if it does not impact your current portfolio in any way. Google will email you with relevant links whenever an article or video comes out online that relates to your keyword choice.

Savvy investors who want to stay on top of the important factors that can affect their investments will use a variety of technological tools that include alerts, videos, blogs, investment trackers and RSS feeds. This allows them to keep current on market conditions in minutes each day, rather than hours.