With the rise of online investing platforms, investing dashboards have become an essential tool for investors to track their portfolios and measure performance. An investing dashboard collects data on holdings, balances, transactions, profit and loss in one place, enabling investors to see the big picture at a glance. For DIY investors managing multiple accounts across different asset classes, a good investing dashboard can help identify underperformers, maintain proper asset allocation, and make data-driven decisions. This article will provide a guide to the key features of investing dashboards, and recommend some useful investing dashboard tools.
Investing dashboards provide an overview of your investment accounts and asset allocation
A core function of investing dashboards is to aggregate data from all your investment accounts, and present an overview of your total portfolio. This includes balances of different account types – taxable brokerage, 401k, IRA, etc., and asset allocation across geographies, sectors, and asset classes like stocks, bonds, real estate, crypto, etc. With all your holdings in one place, you can clearly see if your investments align with your target allocation and risk tolerance. This helps prevent overexposure and ensure proper diversification.
Investing dashboards track investment performance with customizable metrics
Investing dashboards allow you to track key performance metrics like portfolio value, investment returns, profit and loss, etc. over custom time ranges – daily, monthly, annually or since inception. You can add benchmarks to compare your portfolio’s performance to market indexes. Advanced dashboards provide metrics including Sharpe ratio, beta, alpha, etc. to evaluate risk-adjusted returns. Monitoring these metrics periodically helps assess if your investment strategy is working and your portfolio is on track to reach financial goals.
Investing dashboards enable tax planning through gain/loss reporting
Tax reporting is a headache for active investors with multiple trades. Investing dashboards provide useful tax planning features that track realized and unrealized gains/losses on your positions. This allows you to harvest tax losses by strategically selling underperformers before year-end. Some dashboards can also import trading data from brokerages to generate customizable tax reports, ensuring accurate cost basis and gain/loss calculations. Proper tax planning with dashboards can help investors maximize after-tax returns.
Leading investing dashboard tools provide robust functionality and ease of use
For DIY investors, we recommend exploring these leading dashboard tools that offer comprehensive functionality while being easy to use.
Personal Capital – This free dashboard aggregates data from over 15,000 financial institutions and provides holistic tracking of banking, credit, investment accounts. It offers advanced analytics like fee analyzer, retirement planner and financial advisor access.
SigFig – A free dashboard tailored to investors, SigFig syncs with brokerages to provide asset allocation, performance metrics, and tax optimization tools. The UI is intuitive with comprehensive charts and graphs.
Sharesight – For $199/year, Sharesight connects to global stockbrokers to deliver portfolio overviews, tax reporting and performance measurement tools. It’s especially useful for frequent traders.
Spreadsheet – For full customization and control, building your own dashboard via Excel or Google Sheets is a good DIY option. Templates are available to track balances, returns and more with color coding.
Investing dashboards have evolved into an indispensable tool for individual investors to aggregate portfolios, measure performance, optimize taxes and make data-driven decisions. With the functionality offered by leading dashboard tools, investors can gain a competitive edge in the markets while saving time and effort. As dashboard technology improves, it will continue enabling better portfolio analytics and insights for investors.