Whether you're brand new to the stock market or a seasoned investor, everyone has a slightly different approach to tracking and managing their portfolio. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Jan. 14, Fool contributors Toby Bordelon, Rachel Warren, and Connor Allen respond to a member's question about just that topic.
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Toby Bordelon: I want to address one question here. I don't know if you guys have any ideas. Richard O. asked, "Any advice on a solid investment diary or journal app or software?" Do you guys do any of that? Do you use a specific program or software? When I do make notes about investing, myself, I do it on OneNote often.
Rachel Warren: I don't have a specific software. Often I've used Google Sheets to keep track of things, as well as the Notes app on my computer, which is where I've kept a running list of not only the stocks that I own -- because sometimes I forget, and I have to go back and check, especially the more companies that you own -- and then I also will have a long list of stocks that I'm watching and that I'm regularly checking on to see if it's a good time for me to buy. So a couple of different areas there.
Then sometimes, if I'm just thinking about a company and I want to see what's going on, going to that investor relations page, picking a couple of documents, maybe a recent presentation, earnings, and saving that to read for later. So, a diversity of sources there.
Connor Allen: For me, this is something that I want to work on a lot. Most of my stuff that I write is just in Google Docs, in separate articles that I'm putting together. Some theses that I write down.
I guess I've got the same question. What is a good place to do that? I know Stock Card. I don't know if you all have used Stock Card before, but you can create your own portfolios on there, and you can put in exactly the stocks that you own and then a summary of why you bought it.
I think that might be something valuable for me to do, is just put in my own portfolio there. I've actually got some portfolios up there -- not actually mine, but ones that we work on, just to see how they perform. That could be something to look into, is Stock Card. I think it's stockcard.io. Something to check out.
Bordelon: Great. Good suggestion. Richard, look at that if you want. I think one thing you do want to do -- especially if you're talking about journaling from an emotional standpoint to keep yourself centered -- you want to look back at what you were thinking.
I think you want to have something that you can access from your desktop or your laptop, wherever you work, and also from your phone so that it's with you whenever you want to refer to it or whenever you just have a thought and want to make notes.
OneNote does that well, but so do a lot of programs. Any decent note-taking program nowadays will have cross-platform, cross-device functionality, but that's something I would definitely look for.
