The Lemon Fool

I am sick of the Digital Look Portfolio Tool. I have been using it for nearly twenty years, but it no longer works properly. I have just inserted a Vanguard ETF that I have just bought. I added the shares with a buying price per share. Sometimes that holding is shown as zero shares, and sometimes it shows as twice as many shares as I added, but never as the correct value! Infuriating!

There have been other threads on this topic, but most people's requirements are much more complicated than mine. All I want is the current value of each holding, the profit of each holding relative to its base cost, and some totals. My portfolio consists of UK shares, Vanguard ETFs and OEICs. I also have some bonds, but Digital Look cannot cope with those anyway. I would also like to be able to click on each share holding and get up to date information on the share concerned.

I want a tool that is simple, easy to use and, above all, reliable. Any suggestions?

Have you tried Trustnet?

https://www2.trustnet.com/Tools/Portfol ... oHome.aspx

TJH

I saw some positive reviews for Trustnet, so I went into the site and typed RDSB into the search box. Nothing found. I concluded that Trustnet was just for funds, and did not do shares. Was I mistaken?

Morningstar does have a lot of base data for both shares and funds. However, it wanted me to load Flash to use the portfolio tool. I did not fancy that. Perhaps I should ask about the risks on the HWTBC board. Maybe it is not as risky as I fear.

I've used ADVFN for nearly twenty years now and it has worked for me. They recently added a specific dividend option which improves the return calculations somewhat.

I had an ADVFN account back in the mists of time, but I seem to remember that they spammed me mercilessly. I am wary of giving them my email address.

I had a look at ADVFN. The data for shares looks good, but I could not find any OEICs. I may end up having to use more than one tool.

GeoffF100 wrote:I saw some positive reviews for Trustnet, so I went into the site and typed RDSB into the search box. Nothing found. I concluded that Trustnet was just for funds, and did not do shares. Was I mistaken?

Morningstar does have a lot of base data for both shares and funds. However, it wanted me to load Flash to use the portfolio tool. I did not fancy that. Perhaps I should ask about the risks on the HWTBC board. Maybe it is not as risky as I fear.

I have RDSB and many other UK equities in my portfolio on Trustnet. It may be that you have to look for RDSA to find the company in the search engine. You also need to select "EPIC/TIDM" and if you do RDSB comes up.

They cover all the forms of securities which interest me, including equities, ITs and Unit funds. From the front page on the mobile version, click on "Investments" and a drop-down list of all the types of security which you can look up.

TJH

Thank you for that. I just searched in the search box on the Trustnet website. No doubt it is different if I search within a portfolio. Do they give any data on the shares?

It appears that there is little risk in using Flash, provided that it is turned on only for the Morningstar site, so Morningstar is also a possibility. I cannot say that I find the Morningstar site particularly user friendly though. Perhaps Trustnet will be better.

Digital Look used to be great in the old days, but it has gone downhill rapidly, and it is getting really bad now.

I am going to have to conduct some tests. Trustnet and Morningstar look like the best candidates. I can set up simple portfolios comprising a direct share holding, an ETF and an OEIC and see what I think.

GeoffF100 wrote:Thank you for that. I just searched in the search box on the Trustnet website. No doubt it is different if I search within a portfolio. Do they give any data on the shares?

If I click on a company name in my portfolio, I come up with a page with 3 tabs.

Share Price - Shows Open, Close, Bid, Offer, Mid, Hi, Lo, Years Hi/Lo, plus graphs and volume.

Announcements - Brings up a list of RNS postings

Fundamentals - All the usual stuff, going back 8 years including the present year.

TJH

Than you very much TJH. That sounds like exactly what I want. I will definitely go ahead with Trustnet when I have the time.

I have just had a play with the Trustnet portfolio tool. Very impressive. Much better than Digital Look.

GeoffF100 wrote:I had an ADVFN account back in the mists of time, but I seem to remember that they spammed me mercilessly. I am wary of giving them my email address.

Create a junk email account and open it with that, then abandon email account or use for similar purposes again.

GeoffF100 wrote:I had an ADVFN account back in the mists of time, but I seem to remember that they spammed me mercilessly. I am wary of giving them my email address.

I've used ADVFN for my online portfolio for more years than I can remember, and never had a single email from them. Not even in my spam folder

--kiloran

I've taken to using Stockopedia after using DigitalLook for ages. DL was annoying as sometimes lines of stock would appear with 0 shares and the portfolio page was becoming increasingly flakey.
Stockopedia costs me £225 a year but the data it pulls from Thomson Reuters and Financial Express seems up to date, my portfolios never have any glitches. It reminds me a bit of Company REFS (are they still going?) in that it gives me all the information I could possibly want.

Digital Look is a disaster.

For anyone still persevering with DL Portfolios some suggestions:
Don't do any updates during daytimes or when markets active - do it late at night or over the weekend when things are quiet, this results in fewer errors. Only have one window open.
When registering a buy or sell, if you get a silly 'the document has moved here' message or similar, don't refresh as this can lead to double entries and other problems. Use the back button and return to the portfolio page, wait 60 secs or more and then check 'history' or 'statement' by opening in a new browser window/tab to see if an entry was established (it likely wasn't). Close the extra window (don't 'swap' windows) and make the entry again. If successful it will display the entry, then only return to the portfolio page via the link on the page. If you need to make an edit, best wait several days if possible, otherwise funny things may happen. If you can't wait, then make the edit but do not then try to change things again if the entry shows funny (e.g. not right, duplicated or whatever). Give it some hours, days even, before trying anything else (unless you are prepared to delete the whole stock entry and re-enter from scratch). Duplicates, triplicates and all sorts of things can appear and there can be mis-matches between cash balances, stock entries, history and statements. These can hang around a while but will usually sort themselves out over time.
Beware of automatic updates in respect of corporate actions (splits, consolidations etc.), these can lead to some funny results which can't be fixed. Best make your own manual entries.
If making a cash adjustment then follow a similar procedure to a stock entry.
If needing to edit a cash adjustment note that the value or date cannot be amended unless you make an amendment to the description too. That can be something as simple as adding a full stop. It seems to work better if a carriage return/new line is applied at the end of the descriptive text before clicking the 'go' button. Again, if it goes 'funny' (page redirect) don't refresh. Go 'back' to the portfolio page, wait 60secs, check if an entry occurred (method as above) and if not start again.
Keep an eye on your Statement for entry errors a few days later. Doing this sooner can be misleading - even refreshing the 'Statement' (or Portfolio page) can make things disappear and reappear when done too soon after entries are made.
Other tips:
If wanting to add (buy/sell) stock at zero cost it won't let you - enter the value something like 0.0000001 (I think it needs to be at least 4 decimal places) and it will respond with a stupid price. Then edit the entry to 0.00000001 again and it will respond with a zero cost entry.
If entering bonds note that they are often priced in '£' rather than 'p' in the entry form. Sometimes other things fall into this 'bond' category when they shouldn't (NWBD for example). It can take a bit of perseverance to get such entries to show correctly in portfolios. Sometimes to get the result you want may need to divide the quantity of stock by 100 where things trade in minimum quantity (LLPF was a prior example).
Finally, don't forget to pray.

I am using both Digital Look and Trustnet. Trustnet is easy to use, and gives percentage breakdown between my portfolios, which is nice. It has its limitations, however. The information about shares is very limited, compared with Digital Look. It also does not colour gains and losses, and does not give daily gains and losses at all. The site also gets unresponsive at times.

I just added a new share to my Digital Look portfolio. It initially showed as zero shares. I went into "history" and there was noting there. I clicked "view portfolio" and Bingo, the shares appeared.

BobGe, you sum it up forensically - 'Now you see it, now you don't, now you see it in triplicate, oh hang on....
At times it's like you're trying to keep things straight, but it's ALWAYS ahead of you at screwing them up even more.
I'm not sure W/Es are best to tidy up. I wanted to do that this w/e but was locked out the few times I tried. A shame, for a long while it was generally simple, generally reliable and pretty good, barring amending a few divs esp. where it used incorrect exchange rates. These days... phhh

absolutezero wrote:I've taken to using Stockopedia after using DigitalLook for ages. DL was annoying as sometimes lines of stock would appear with 0 shares and the portfolio page was becoming increasingly flakey.
Stockopedia costs me £225 a year but the data it pulls from Thomson Reuters and Financial Express seems up to date, my portfolios never have any glitches. It reminds me a bit of Company REFS (are they still going?) in that it gives me all the information I could possibly want.

On Line Company REFS is alive and well; I pay annually - about £200. For me, it enables investors to fully implement Jim Slater's 'Zulu Principal'. If I'm concerned about a share, I can get a full and up to date report in seconds. Call them and ask for a sample page on a share. I like the way all the useful parameters fit onto one side of A4.

BTW, I and a few from my investment club met the DL guys in London in their very early days. They wanted to know what information did we want. I understood that the original DL Portfolio was written for Barclays so it is high quality then, much lower quality now! I still like it. I find the Charts tool very useful and neat. You don't have to have any shares or prices to quickly see trends.

Nick

FYI, REFS has a 30-day free trial

http://try.companyrefs.co/my-free-trial/