As an investor, regardless of your investment strategy and goal, it is always a good idea for you to monitor your portfolios through either an online tracking service or software program. In a recent article I wrote, “The Top Portfolio Management Software,” I discussed what the top downloadable programs offer and what their key functions are.

This article demonstrates the best online portfolio trackers available to individual investors. No matter what type of investor you are, keeping an eye on your investments should always be a priority. Thankfully, websites devoted to this task are continually offering more powerful portfolio management tools to help you do exactly that.

Since this article is geared toward individual investors and not power traders or institutional investors, in order to be one of the best tracking sites, the tracker needs to have a solid balance of power and functionality. Moreover, the website must have a user-friendly, easy-to-navigate interface. Finally, it is important not to overlook the price tag. Power trading and institutional investor tools often come at a heftier price than tools geared toward individual investors. With that said, we have taken each site’s price into consideration when formulating a list of top trackers. The five sites appointed as the best portfolio trackers in this year’s comparison are Macroaxis, Morningstar.com, Personal Capital, Portfolio Monkey and SigFig. Morningstar.com is the lone returnee to the comparison, which was last updated in 2012. As the replacement of the Wikinvest service, SigFig is essentially a returnee, but for the purposes of this comparison we label it as a new addition.

Our comparison grid details all of the features offered by our five picks. The information is broken down below as each feature is discussed. For starters, Table 1 shows the contact information, cost (if any), software compatibility, supported brokerage services and import/export compatibility for each program.

Table 1. Contact, Price and Compatibility

	Macroaxis	Morningstar.com	Personal Capital	Portfolio Monkey	SigFig
Company	Macroaxis LLC	Morningstar, Inc.	Personal Capital Advisors Corporation	Portfolio Monkey, Inc.	SigFig
Web Address	www.macroaxis.com	www.morningstar.com	www.personalcapital.com	www.portfoliomonkey.com	www.sigfig.com
Subscription Price	free to $79.95/mo. (7-day free trial)	free to $199/year	free	free	free
Desktop Software Compatibility	importable from most brokerages	Money, Quicken, Excel	importable from most brokerages		importable from most brokerages
Brokerage Services	none	none	X	none	yes; about 70 domestic brokerages
Import/ Export Data	X	X	X		X

Table 2. Securites Handled

	Macroaxis	Morningstar.com	Personal Capital	Portfolio Monkey	SigFig
Maximum Portfolios/Securities per Portfolio	Up to 25/40	25/140 (free), 25/280 (premium)	unlimited/unlimited	15/25	unlimited/unlimited
Maximum Securities	unlimited	unlimited	unlimited	unlimited	unlimited
Portfolio Updates (Frequency of Updates)	near-real-time quotes	automatic (real-time quotes)	automatic (real-time quotes)	automatic (delayed quotes)	automatic (delayed quotes)
Securities/Assets Handled
Cash/Stocks/Mutual Funds/ETFs	X	X	X	X	X
Bonds (Fixed/ Variable/Zero/PIK)	limited	X	X		X
Annuities
Options/Futures/ Warrants			X (options)		X (options)
Real Estate/ Partnerships			X
User-Defined			X		X
Security Classification
Identification (Name/Ticker/ CUSIP)	X (name/ticker)	X (name/ticker)	X	X (name/ticker)	X (name/ticker)
Account Number/ Management Firm					X
Asset Class (Predefined/ User-Defined)	X (predefined, standard)	X (predefined)	X (predefined)	X (predefined)	yes (predefined)
Industry	X	X	X	X	X

Table 3. Additional Analysis Tools Offered

	Macroaxis	Morningstar.com	Personal Capital	Portfolio Monkey	SigFig
Stock Screening/ Mutual Fund Screening	X	X		X
Financial Planning	X	X	X	X	X
Interactive Charting	X	X		X	X

Table 4. Email Service and Newswires Offered

	Macroaxis	Morningstar.com	Personal Capital	Portfolio Monkey	SigFig
Newswire Services	own market and equity analysis contributors	Morningstar, Dow Jones Newswires, MarketWatch, AP, Benzinga, PR Newswire, BusinessWire, GlobeNewsire		Forbes, Motley Fool, TheStreet.com, MarketWatch, Barrons.com, WSJ.com, Gurufocus.com, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, CNBC, Bloomberg	Bezinga, Bloomberg, CNN Money, Financial Times, Forbes, MarketWatch, Motley Fool, New York Times, PR Newswire, Reuters, Seeking Alpha, TheStreet.com, WSJ.com


Email Alerts
News	upcoming in 2017	X			X
Price Targets	upcoming in 2017
Dividends	upcoming in 2017	X
Splits	upcoming in 2017	X
Email Reports
Security Values	upcoming in 2017	X	X		X
Market Summary	upcoming in 2017	X	X		X

Discussion

Richard Shaw from AZ posted over 9 years ago:

I admit not to having read through the full report but apart from the ability to track more than one portfolio are these any better than the reporting and analysis you can get from your broker e.g. Schwab? I could see their use if you want to track portions of your brokerage investments separately, perhaps because you have invested using advice from different sources and need to see how each gouping is doing.

Jerry Chandler from FL posted over 9 years ago:

As usual this review is excellent.

Scott O Connor from AZ posted over 9 years ago:

Richard, I have test driven Portfolio Monkey and am a Morningstar subscriber. Each presents portfolio views and insights far different that that available on my broker's platform (Schwab). Portfolio Monkey is an odd duck, with few features, but the ones it has are unique to the market. It is free, so it is hard to complain. Try it! I found that it does not cover some of my holdings, so the portfolio analysis is handicapped a bit by that. They use a couple of algorithms to forecast price movement and return, and those results will surprise you. Morningstar offers a lot, and I have not found another site that offers as much good quality information for the price.

Ronnie Spruell from LA posted over 9 years ago:

Andrew - Good review. I use Morningstar (through Quicken), Personal Capital, Wikinvest, and Sigfig. I also use my brokerage, Fidelity. Morningstar through Quicken is what I consider to be a crippled version. It is lacking several features. I prefer Wikinvest over Sigfig. I think that Wikinvest has a better user interface. I really like the way Personal Capital shows my Asset Allocation. I can drill down in each asset class. This is something that is hard to do with the others. They are all similar, but all different. I have never used Schwab, but I use fidelity's portfolio view. I have tried Vanguard, but they tend to be on the trailing edge of technology.

J Gromala from MI posted over 9 years ago:

Are there any security issues with Personal Capital, for example, in that I would be giving them my user name and passwords? Please confirm that Personal Capital also includes credit cards, checking accounts, and bank money market accounts, for example. VERY THOROUGH analysis. Thanks!

Walter Rogoff from CA posted over 9 years ago:

Fidelity, which I use, has tried to make some improvements in what has to be the worst aggregator around.More recently, there have been admitted issues in communicating with Vanguard accounts. I have always found their Portfolio View to be very archaic and unstable. Morningstar's main problem is the lack of connectivity to the brokerages. I used Personal Capital a while back, till I started getting cold calls to use their advisory service. I think I will reactivate my SigFig, which I think is also the basis for the USA Today portfolio tracker. Thanks for a nice review.

Walter Rogoff from CA posted over 9 years ago:

Fidelity, which I use, has tried to make some improvements in what has to be the worst aggregator around.More recently, there have been admitted issues in communicating with Vanguard accounts. I have always found their Portfolio View to be very archaic and unstable. Morningstar's main problem is the lack of connectivity to the brokerages. I used Personal Capital a while back, till I started getting cold calls to use their advisory service. I think I will reactivate my SigFig, which I think is also the basis for the USA Today portfolio tracker. Thanks for a nice review.

Walter from CA posted over 9 years ago:

Fidelity, which I use, has tried to make some improvements in what has to be the worst aggregator around.More recently, there have been admitted issues in communicating with Vanguard accounts. I have always found their Portfolio View to be very archaic and unstable. Morningstar's main problem is the lack of connectivity to the brokerages. I used Personal Capital a while back, till I started getting cold calls to use their advisory service. I think I will reactivate my SigFig, which I think is also the basis for the USA Today portfolio tracker. Thanks for a nice review.

Edward Emory from TN posted over 9 years ago:

Iam concerned that my trading account could be hacked through an automatic linkage with the portfolio tracker.

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