Track Stock Portfolio in Real-Time with Google Template

What are you using to track your investments?

I have been using Quicken Home & Business for investment tracking for years. It is a powerful and convenient tool that does a lot of other things than tracking stocks and mutual funds. However, the convenience comes with a price tag of $100. It’s not cheap for sure. If you only want to have a tool to manage your investments, then you don’t need Quicken. In fact, there are plenty of tools to help you do what you want to do for free. One of them is Google Doc.

I recently created a Google Doc Stock Portfolio Tracking Tool based on a Google Doc Template. What makes it easier to create such a tool with Google Doc is that I can simply use GoogleFinance functions to retrieve values I need. You can do the job with an Excel Spreadsheet, but then you will need to figure out where to get the data and so on. With Google Doc, a function call to GoogleFinance() is enough. Here’s how my stock portfolio tracker looks like.

In addition to the columns in the original Google template, I added Purchase Date, Purchase Price, Position, Daily Change, Total Market Value, and P&L into the spreadsheet. At the end, I also have total daily change ($ and %), market value of the entire portfolio, and profit & loss ($ and %). I have published the spreadsheet, so if you want to use it, you can download the spreadsheet and save it as your own copy.

Right now, the spreadsheet only has a few stocks I own. To track the stocks you own,

1. Delete rows from the top and only leave the last row (row # 4 as in the screenshot below);
2. Highlight the last empty row by clicking the row number from the leftmost (# 8 in the picture below);
3. Click Insert from the menu bar on the top and select Row Above;
4. Copy the last row that’s left in the spreadsheet from Step 1 and paste the entire row to the new row just created

Now that you have the new row with identical information as the last row, all you need to do next is replace Ticker Symbol, Purchase Date, Purchase Price and Position with the new stock you want to add to the spreadsheet. The spreadsheet then will automatically calculate the rest for you.

Remember, when you add new investments to the spreadsheet, always leave a blank row above Total and always insert a new row above the blank row and copy and paste the entire row to the new empty row you just created. Each row is only for one transaction, even if it’s the same stock (as I have two rows of C above).

I am sure there are other functions, such as Year-to-date return, etc., that can be added to the spreadsheet to make it more useful, I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet. If you have ideas on what to add, please let me know.