A portfolio tracker allows you to track the movements of all the holdings of your portfolio. If you have invested your money in Canada or anywhere else in the world, you will know that portfolio tracking is important. It’s a wonderful tool for all kinds of investors out there. You can track the way your portfolio allocations stand against your long term investment goals. You can also compare your portfolio’s performance with that of the market. You can create manual portfolios to help you test out investment strategies or add them directly from your investment accounts. Remember, checking your investments too frequently can lead to excessive trading, but if you want to keep your asset allocation on the right path, a portfolio tracker is a simple and effective way to monitor it. Most brokerages have some sort of tracking and research tool, but you can only use accounts affiliated with that broker. If your portfolio contains holdings from different providers, you’ll get access to great research but you won’t be able to combine the accounts and form an overall snapshot. With a portfolio tracker, you can analyze your total allocation better and formulate a more pointed strategy. You can use a portfolio tracker no matter where you live in Canada. In this post we will take a look at the best portfolio trackers in Canada. Before we get started with the list, let’s discuss the key features of a good portfolio tracker. Great portfolio trackers usually provide wonderful research tools and draw from an exhaustive pool of investment tickers. All of the best portfolio trackers in Canada will have these features:

• Cost: The portfolio trackers that we will discuss in this list are either free or well priced. A lot of them have a free option for new users with the provision to purchase more add-ons later.
• A high number of trackable assets: What good is a portfolio tracker if you can’t follow the funds you own? A good tracker will let you follow all types of investments, from stocks and bonds to ETFs. There are even portfolio trackers for cryptocurrency.
• Speed: You obviously want a tracker that loads quickly on your phone or laptop, but speed is also required for price updates. A tracker should post real-time (or close to it) stock quotes; you can’t trade if you’re getting prices more than 15 minutes old.
• User-friendly interface: A portfolio tracker should be easy to use and simple enough for everyone to operate.

Now that we have discussed that, let’s move on to our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada.

Here are the best portfolio trackers in Canada:

Globeinvestor

Kicking off our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Globeinvestor. You get a couple of investment-monitoring tools here: a portfolio tracker for the investments you own, want to keep track of, and watchlists for stocks you would like to follow on a casual basis. Both tools are integrated into one page that also includes news, analysis and events (earnings, dividend payments etc.) related to your holdings.

Tracker Highlights: Most sites offer links to news about the stocks you own, but Globeinvestor stands out for providing news and analysis from the world the email newsletters consist of more than what are basically just news releases. Dividend-focused investors will like the data on payout ratios and dividend growth rates. On top of that, useful information is provided on portfolio allocation. You can easily learn if you’re overexposed to a specific sector or country.

A number of the analysis on individual stocks is reserved for Globe Unlimited subscribers.

Morningstar Canada

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Morningstar Canada. This independent investment analysis firm is a good source of commentary on stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds. The Morningstar Canada portfolio tracker lacks visual appeal, but compensates with its versatility and breadth. Note that some features are reserved for paying subscribers.

Tracker Highlights: Click the “my performance” tab and you’ll see your year-by-year returns as well as annualized returns over periods going back as long as 10 years, or since its inception. There’s also a visible display where you’ll compare your portfolio with various benchmark indexes. Another plus is how easy it’s to blend stocks and ETFs also as mutual funds within the same portfolio view.

This is not a leader in providing relevant news for your holdings. Morningstar five-star ratings for stocks are shown, but you can’t read the research reports unless you’re a paying subscriber.

Sharesight

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Sharesight. A more sophisticated portfolio-tracking tool, but also one which will cost you money if you’ve got a portfolio made up of more than 10 stocks. You can have up to 20 holdings for $12 a month, three portfolios with unlimited holdings for $19 a month and five portfolios with unlimited holdings for $25 a month. The latter two plans come with more sophisticated portfolio reporting.

Tracker Highlights:The free plan also packs a lot of value. For example, you can track performance by dividends, capital gains and currency. A unique feature allows you to share your portfolio with someone.

However, the total cost of unlocking the complete capabilities of this portfolio tracker is expensive.

TMX Money

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is TMX Money. It’s a straightforward portfolio tracker delivered to you by TMX Group, which runs the Toronto stock market.

Tracker Highlights: Easy to line up and maintain portfolios and make a custom view that is based on the data you want to analyse. The “charts” view gives you instant charts of all of your holdings along with the choice to compare them with various benchmarks. The “allocation” view turns your portfolio into a pie chart showing how big a share each of your stocks accounts for. Also, TSX stock quotes are shown in real time, while most others use quotes delayed by 15 or 20 minutes.

Although this is a free service, it’s not as useful as the others for tracking performance of shares and the portfolio as a whole.

Wealthica

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Wealthica. This one’s different. Rather than inputting the stock and funds you own into Wealthica, you use it to aggregate all your investing accounts (and some bank accounts) into one location, offering a consolidated view. This kind of portfolio aggregation has been around for years, but it hasn’t caught on in Canada. One reason is security – you have to provide your user name and password from your various accounts to add an account to Wealthica, and this could violate security guarantees that the majority investment dealers offer against fraud or hacking. All of the security measures of Wealthica are meticulously mentioned on the firm’s website.

Wealthica links up with more than 30 companies in the online brokerage, advice, robo-adviser and banking fields (participants include AGF Mutual Funds, Assante Wealth Management, robo-advisers Nest Wealth and Wealthsimple and nine online brokerage firms, including those owned by major banks,). Provide your log-in particulars and the account is linked. Once your accounts are loaded, you’ll get comprehensive reports showing what you own and how it’s performing. Check out the income report, which documents interest and dividend income generated by your investments.

Yahoo Finance

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Yahoo Finance. Yahoo has been within the portfolio-tracking business since forever and now offers a user-friendly service for following stocks you own and people you’re just watching. Nine different portfolio views are offered, and there is a further choice to create your own view.

Tracker Highlights: Simple to set up and maintain. The summary page offers a consolidated view of how all of your various portfolios have done on an intraday and since-inception basis.

Betterment

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Betterment. Its mobile investment app is available for both Android and iOS and can be downloaded from Google Play and App Store, respectively. The app is available for free and allows you to: check the balance and returns of your portfolio in real time, deposit and withdraw money anytime anywhere, manage your portfolio’s bond and stock allocation and review your goals and account activity

It also allows monitoring of all accounts in one place, helping to diagnose how much your outside accounts are costing you in fees and uninvested cash. You can sync your external accounts such as bank accounts and other investments.

Status Money

Next on our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada is Status Money. First, download the Status Money app on iOS or Android and see how you compare with your peers. You’ll be able to track and manage your entire financial life using your peers as a benchmark. Examine your spending and find out if you’re overspending, paying high-interest rates or not saving enough. Rest assured, your comparisons will be anonymous.

Next, ask questions and share knowledge privately. You can get the latest financial news and insights from people similar to yourself. Ask questions, follow topics and get involved with the community as much or as little as you’d like.

With Status Money, you can get recommendations and earn cash rewards. To earn rewards, simply refer your friends. There’s no limit on how much you can earn and your rewards never expire.

Quick Portfolio Trackers

These two options are exclusively for the investors who are just looking for a quick view of the stocks they’re following:

MarketWatch

This is definitely the go-to website for following Canadian and global markets. It offers a watchlist that shows how your stocks do on an intraday basis. Two useful details: Volume is compared with the daily average for that stock, while prices are shown as compared with their range for the day and therefore the past 52 weeks. For Canadian stocks, type CA: in front of the symbol.

MSN Money

The watchlist feature offers a “fundamentals” view that shows things such as price-earnings ratio, return on equity, earnings per share and revenue growth.

Best Portfolio Trackers in Canada: Conclusion

Portfolio trackers are great tools which do their self explanatory job very well. However, you must remember, a portfolio tracker isn’t a social media app and you shouldn’t use it like one. If you spend too much time tracking your portfolio, you might end up partaking in excess and reckless trading. Use the tools from our list of the best portfolio trackers in Canada with caution. If you pay excessive attention to daily movements of the market, you become more susceptible to mistakes. You don’t need to check your portfolio tracker every day as if it were your Facebook or Instagram feed.