How I make the most of all my Sharesight portfolios
If you’ve been using Sharesight for a while, you’re probably aware that you can use Sharesight for Free to track up to 10 holdings in one portfolio, and when you upgrade to an Investor, Expert or Sharesight Pro plan you unlock additional portfolios based on the plan you select.
But if you’re like me, you may only need a handful of portfolios to track the shares you actually own. If that’s the case, you may be left with a couple unused portfolios. As the saying goes, a Sharesight portfolio is a terrible thing to waste. Since you’ve got access to those extra portfolios as part of your premium plan, you may as well use them to become a better investor. In this article, I’ll share how I use my portfolios to track my:
1 – I use one Sharesight portfolio to track my trading account
This is made up of shares I’ve bought locally (on the ASX) since I started investing on my own a few years ago. At time of writing, it includes 13 holdings (mostly ETFs and a few individual shares). I track this portfolio very closely, both on my laptop and on the Sharesight mobile app.
2 – I use a Sharesight portfolio to track my RRSP
I’m from Canada and I participated in a RRSP (registered retirement savings plan) before moving to Australia. The portfolio is made up of a couple mutual funds traded on the TSE so it’s in Canadian dollars. This is a portfolio that I no longer contribute to directly, but I do reinvest the dividends. Although it’s not a portfolio I track very closely, I’ve loaded it into Sharesight so I can check in on it from time to time (and also because the reports offered by my broker are really terrible).
3 – I use a Sharesight portfolio to track my Superannuation
Working in Australia provides me with a Superannuation portfolio, which my employer (Sharesight) contributes to as part of my remuneration. As the fund is unlisted and not unitised, I use Sharesight’s Custom Investment and update the total every now and then based on my current balance. This is less about tracking the portfolio’s performance, and more about tracking my overall balance alongside my other investments.
4 – I use a Sharesight portfolio as an investment watchlist
One of the best uses I’ve found for my extra portfolios is by setting up an investment watchlist. It makes it really easy to keep track of various stocks and compare them against each other.
While I could have set up a watchlist in Google Finance or Yahoo Finance, I decided not to bother since they don’t factor in the impact of dividends or currency fluctuations fees into the returns. Sharesight on the other hand, makes this super easy to track these at a glance:
My watchlist has been especially useful when I’ve been researching different stocks to buy – especially ETFs that have similar regions or themes. For example, when I was looking to invest in ETFs that track emerging markets, I added the ones I was interested in so I could compare them side-by-side:
By doing this, I was able to check the performance of these ETFs over different periods to “backtest” their returns over time. This is much easier than scrolling through the various ETF providers’ websites. Also, being able to compare the capital gain and dividend yield components of the various ETFs in this way is very handy and not something I was getting anywhere else.
5 – I use Sharesight to track my model portfolio
Another use I’ve found for my extra Sharesight portfolios is creating my own model portfolio. Essentially, I created a model portfolio containing all the stocks I was looking to eventually own, and used Custom Groups to organise them according to my preferred asset allocation methodology. I used the Diversity Report to ensure the proportions were as close as possible to what I was trying to achieve:
This was especially handy when I was first getting started with investing, and didn’t yet own all the stocks I wanted, in the proportions I wanted for my target asset allocation. It allowed me to do a bit of backtesting to see how the portfolio performed over various periods of time.
When I started investing a few years ago, I was planning to only invest in ETFs. Since then, I’ve decided to invest in a few individual companies as well. I’ve found that having a model portfolio has been a very useful way for me to compare my actual performance to my model portfolio, and ensure I’m staying on track with my investing goals.
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