This article provides an overview A+ Investor. Let’s get started on your journey to discovering all of the powerful financial tools that A+ Investor offers.
Domestically, there are roughly 6,600 stocks, 20,800 mutual funds and 4,900 ETFs to choose from. How do you narrow this universe down? Once you do that, how do you pick the stocks, funds or ETFs that are best for you?
A+ Investor offers a quantitative filtering strategy to identify stocks, mutual funds or ETFs that meet a specific set of criteria. Once you have screened the universe, you can do a deeper dive to see if the stock/fund/ETF fits into your portfolio/investing philosophy.
To find stock, mutual fund and ETF ideas, A+ Investor offers the following tools and solution(s):
These powerful tools will help you narrow down stock, mutual fund and ETF ideas and make informed investment decisions.
To get started with A+ Investor, click on the My Tools Dropdown Menu in the top right corner of AAII.com and select A+ Investor from the list.
Managing a stock portfolio can be a rewarding and low-cost method to meeting all or a portion of your allocation if you can follow a disciplined and systematic approach that matches your philosophy, time commitment and interest and is based on sound investing principles.
With so many different approaches to investing, how do you know which investing strategies are right for you to follow?
To begin answering this question, you need to do some self-reflection and answer some additional questions.
Once you answer those questions, you can start looking for a stock selection approach that fits your needs. Uncertain about the answer? You can read about the advantages and disadvantages of each factor and guru screen.
AAII tracks 55 stock screening strategies, and A+ Investor offers several ways to break down this listing to focus on those that are of greatest interest to you. These include:
For each of the strategies AAII has developed and tracks, you can read about the underlying approach as well as see the daily passing company lists and performance dating back to 1998.
With A+ Investor, we make it easy for you to identify those strategies that fit your investing philosophy.
So far, we have discussed using a quantitative filtering strategy to identify stocks, mutual funds or ETFs that meet your set of investing criteria, and you have a better understanding of what kind of investor you are and what investment factors you prefer that match your stock portfolio/investment philosophy.
Now, to help you analyze and select stocks, mutual funds or ETFs, A+ Investor provides the following investment evaluators:
The stock, mutual fund and ETF evaluators will help you gain the following insights about the securities you already own, as well as those you are considering buying, including:
Evaluators are accessed by clicking on a ticker anywhere on AAII.com or typing a ticker or company name in the search bar at the top left of most webpages.
You may have money/investments scattered across multiple accounts—some taxable, some tax-deferred. You may be asking yourself; how do I keep track of my asset allocation across all of these accounts? No worries. Remember, A+ Investor is a one-stop-shop for investment data and analysis tools.
A+ Investor will help you focus on the allocation of your overall portfolio holdings as well as the tax advantages each account type offers. As you accumulate capital, you’ll know where to push money into underweighted holdings and redeem from overweighted holdings.
Any move you make, we have got you covered! All you need to do is set up and maintain a portfolio with A+ Investor at My Portfolio.
Investors are told over and over the importance of having a diversified portfolio—across asset types, investment style, market caps, sectors/industries and foreign/domestic realms. However, with many investors having multiple accounts, and especially when holding mutual funds and ETFs, it is difficult to know what you are holding and whether you are truly diversified.
By entering all your accounts and holdings into a single My Portfolio tracker, A+ Investor can then analyze your complete portfolio or a subset of it to see the breakdown by asset type, market capitalization, sectors/industries and foreign/domestic. You can even import your holdings from your brokerage account.
A+ Investor-based solutions include:
Use the Diversification Analyzer to determine weightings that need changing.
The mutual fund and ETF portfolio insights will help you examine your current mutual fund and ETF holdings to see how their performance, volatility, manager tenure and expense ratio compare to their category averages.
Investors are bombarded with ideas about which stocks they should be buying, but relatively little information is given about when to sell. If you hold individual stocks, even if you are a long-term investor, there will come a time when you need to decide whether or not it is worthwhile to hold a given stock. The most obvious reason many investors consider selling a stock is because it is underperforming other stocks in your portfolio or the overall market. Too many times, we hold onto big losers in the hope of recouping some or all of those losses. But a stock that is down 30% since purchase will have to rebound nearly 43% in order to break even, a tall order for many stocks in a reasonable amount of time.
So, the question we are faced with is: When do you sell a stock?
With stocks, you should have a strategy in place to select and manage your investments. Your approach will determine what to buy and when, and why to sell. When making a sell decision, it is important not to let your emotions dictate your actions. Using a quant-based methodology to determine when to sell a stock will help keep emotions in check.
For most investors, the decision to sell is based on one of three factors:
Selling a stock is an important investment decision, so it is crucial to arm yourself with the proper information to avoid making an emotional decision. Evaluating your stock holdings to see how they fit within your allocation strategy (sector, size, etc.) as well as how they rate on their fundamental characteristics will help you make an informed sell (or hold) decision.
A+ Investor offers several tools to help you decide whether it’s time to sell a stock:
Using the tools above, you can start developing a picture of a stock’s current prospects, which should aid in the decision of whether to hold or sell the stock.
We also have similar tools that will help you know when to sell a fund or ETF. A+ Investor-based solutions include:
One site, one powerful tool. A+ Investor is a one-stop destination for all your investment analysis needs.
To fully unlock the power and value of A+ Investor, set up your portfolio today at https://hub.aaii.com/my-portfolio.
Click here to get started using A+ Investor.
