The New Features We’ve Added to Our Website
by Charles Rotblut | January 16, 2020
We recently added several enhancements to our website, including all new tools to help you make better investment decisions. This week, I’m going to highlight the changes you may find to be most beneficial.
My Portfolio—One of my favorite new features is our new portfolio tracking tool, My Portfolio. We built this from scratch using our perspective as individual investors. It provides the price and return information on stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and mutual funds. If you bought an investment on more than one occasion, you can enter each lot separately. Fundamental indicators about your stocks—including valuation and yield—are provided. Plus, there is the option to write notes about each investment. This can help remind you why you bought the investment and/or what would prompt you sell it.
Finding My Portfolio is easy. Just click on the “My Portfolio” box located in the top-left corner of any page on AAII.com.
Stock Screens—Our 60 guru and factor screens are now updated on approximately the first of every month, earlier than before. AAII members can easily see the passing companies by going to our Stocks page and clicking on Stock Guru Strategies or Stock Factor Strategies. Not sure which screen you should look at? Our Strategy Power Rankings give you an overview of each strategy.
Redesigned Stocks Area—Our new Stocks area gives you access to the aforementioned stock screens and much more. Through this section, you can not only access our popular Model Shadow Stock Portfolio, but also see a list of our current Shadow Stock Ideas and the transactions we’ve recently made in the portfolio. Want even more ideas? We show you the five stocks with the highest overall A+ Stock Grades.
Mutual Fund Tools—If you’re looking for mutual fund ideas, our Funds area will give you ideas. We’ve created Fund First Cuts to identify both funds with attractive traits as well as those that should be avoided. You can also see the five best and worst funds by category and the most consistent performers. Having problems choosing between two or more mutual funds? Enter their ticker symbols into our Fund Compare tool to get a side-by-side comparison of each fund.
You’ll like our expanded mutual fund universe. We now cover more than 25,000 mutual funds including those only sold by advisers or available for purchase through your 401(k) plan.
ETFs—This brand-new ETF area provides ETF First Cuts, the top- and bottom-performing ETFs and the most consistent performing ETFs. Our ETF compare tool allows you to contrast two or more ETFs side-by-side. You’ll even find useful ETF articles here.
More Powerful Search Bar—If you want to look up a stock, mutual fund or ETF quote, simply type the ticker symbol in the search bar located at the top of any page on the AAII website. Seeking information on a topic such as retirement withdrawals? Just type it in and hit enter on your keyboard or click the magnifying glass on the screen.
Stock Evaluator—This page appears when you call up a quote for a stock. In addition to the current price, you can see a summary of the company’s financials, along with key growth, valuation and earnings estimates data. Clicking on the “Charts” tab will give you access to our new charting tool as well as historical price data.
Mutual Fund and ETF Evaluators—Calling up a quote for a mutual fund or ETF will show our new evaluators for each. These pages give you an overview of each fund, the current A+ Grades plus key information about returns, portfolio composition, expenses and purchase limitations.
All New Home Page—Our home page has been completely redesigned to alert you to great content we’re publishing on AAII.com. You can also see what AAII members are discussing on the website. Getting to our home page is easy; just click on the AAII logo from anywhere on our website.
I encourage you to visit our website and click around. I think you’ll find many of the new features to be helpful. If you’re more of a visual learner, we’ve created a video to walk you through the redesigned areas. And consider giving our new A+ Investor service a try. It has even more investing features, including our brand-new stock grades quant screener, mutual fund screener, ETF screener and personalized portfolio insights.
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Updates to AAII.com – My colleague Wayne Thorp goes into greater detail about My Portfolio and the improvements made to the Stocks area of our website.
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AAII Guides – Our guides help you find great investment ideas, useful websites and stay up to date on the latest tax law changes.
The percentage of individual investors describing their short-term outlook for stock prices as neutral is at a five-month low in the latest AAII Sentiment Survey. Pessimism also declined, while optimism rose.
Bullish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will rise over the next six months, rebounded by 8.8 percentage points to 41.8%. Optimism is above its historical average of 38.0% for just the 12th time in the past 52 weeks.
Neutral sentiment, expectations that stock prices will stay essentially unchanged over the next six months, fell 6.4 percentage points to 30.7%. This is the first time that neutral sentiment is below its historical average of 31.5% since August 7, 2019.
Bearish sentiment, expectations that stock prices will fall over the next six months, pulled back by 2.4 percentage points to 27.5%. The drop keeps pessimism below its historical average of 30.5% for the 13th consecutive week.
All three indicators are currently well within their typical historical ranges.
The cooling of tensions between Iran and the U.S., as well as the rising stock prices, are likely contributing to investor optimism. Also affecting sentiment are the trade agreement between the U.S. and China, the November elections, Washington politics, earnings growth, monetary policy, the economy and valuations.
This week’s special question asked AAII members to explain how, if at all, oil prices are impacting their outlook. The majority (64%) of respondents state that oil prices are not impacting their overall market outlook. Reasoning in this group includes that there is lower demand for oil and that fluctuations to this point are immaterial. However, many within this group did say that they are monitoring oil prices for more drastic volatility. On the other hand, 21% of respondents state that oil prices are making them more optimistic. Many in this group say that if oil prices continue to rise, other commodities will follow. Conversely, 15% of respondents state that they have a more bearish outlook for the stock market and believe that the market will weaken following a decline in oil prices.
Here is a sampling of the responses:
- “I don’t believe oil prices are as pivotal as they once were. The U.S. is a top producer and we have huge reserves. Plus, people are not using as much as they did 10–20 years ago.”
- “I view oil prices as a good marker for the market—continued increases help earnings and are a positive benefit for the whole market.”
- “It depends on how much they rise. If everything else is going well (rising), and oil goes to $100/barrel, then that will be bad. If it rises to the high $60s or low $70s, then we’re probably OK.”
- “The current increase in price is due to the conflict with Iran and sanctions. But oil prices should move up during the year and I view that as a positive impact on the market.”
- “Negatively. Oil’s failure to rally suggests economic weakness that the market will eventually realize. The energy sector has failed to engage in market upside suggesting slower economic growth.”
Bullish: 41.8%, up 8.8 points
Neutral: 30.7%, down 6.4 points
Bearish: 27.5%, down 2.4 points
Bullish: 38.5%
Neutral: 31.0%
Bearish: 30.5%
January 9, 2020 Part 2 of My Investing Resolutions for 2020
January 2, 2020 My Investing Resolutions for 2020, Part 1
December 19, 2019 Spending Bills Affect Inherited IRAs and Medical Deductions
December 12, 2019 The Bond Market Armageddon That Didn’t Happen
Discussion
Robert from FL posted over 6 years ago:
I applaud the site update but My Portfolio feature doesn't recognize any CEF tickers. This makes it pretty much useless as a replacement for other on line sites such as Morning star. Pity really, was looking to move more of my financial data tracking here but guess I will have to wait & see if CEF tickers will be added later.
Keith from CA posted over 6 years ago:
I subscribed to the A+ Investor program several days ago and was really excited to get started. However, the Portfolio doesn't allow me to make any entry in the Shares Held column, thereby making the best features of the Portfolio useless. I've written emails to AAII and left 2 phone messages to a person in the IP Dept. but I can't get a response from anyone to fix the problem. I'm starting to lose respect for AAII's member services.
Fred from AZ posted over 6 years ago:
What's a CEF ticker?
Charles from NJ posted over 6 years ago:
Your site has become a place where you peddle books and investing plans. When attempting to do anything regarding a stock you have nothing about it cannot be done. Financial! another books seller. Could not find SEC filings.
Tom from TN posted over 6 years ago:
Keith,in order to make entries, you have to click on the MODIFY tab and then edit the different investments in the portfolio. At least, that is what I recall doing.
Marty from NJ posted over 6 years ago:
I've been checking out the site update over the last few days. Unfortunately I've been finding many bugs, broken links and bad pointers. The layout and usability of the site is unfortunately diminished. I believe it's better to fully separate base and premium services as AAII had done previously with VMQ, Stock Super Stars, etc. Combining/commingling the new A+ premium service with the older base services and reducing the base offerings (such as the stock screens re-brand/re-name) is the wrong direction IMHO.
Ken from MN posted over 6 years ago:
I believe the sight used to have some interactive charting tools. Believe this is a needed tool for the sight to be complete. If I have to go somewhere else to do some charting for ETF's and Mutual funds and get a more robust inter-active charting experience it is hard to justify the added cost for each of the premium experience. Believe I read that AAII appears to becoming more of a money making proposition. My original experience with AAII allowed the used of the stock screeners and that went away when the paid service for Stock Investor Pro came to be. Hard to say how much longer I will stay a lifetime AAII member as it continues to evolve into a subscription based system.
David F from AK posted over 6 years ago:
I'm not sure if or how I will get along with the new portfolio format. I liked the old one, as it provided simplicity. For example, I had my and my wife's portfolio on separate pages, a page for cash-like items (home equity), with a net-worth summary on the last page.
Jerry Klinger from Washington posted over 6 years ago:
The new personal portfolio tracker is an abomination. It doesn't allow me to create columns of data that I choose to show and it lists two different bits of stock info' for a single stock one on top of another in the same column. This makes it difficult to comprehend and assess the data in a logical and easily understandable way. I see no way to personalize the columns to suit my purposes. Also, what happened to the very useful ASSETS portfolio. Please bring back the very easy to use and to personalize for users PORTFOLIO and ASSETS you've wisely provided for the past number of years. I'd be willing to pay a nominal fee for that service.
Charles Rotblut from IL posted over 6 years ago:
All, Thanks for the feedback. Regarding the stock screens, they can be found by going to the Stocks tab. They are accessible by AAII members and are now updated around the first every calendar month. -Charles
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