How can I tell if my self-directed portfolio is beating the s&p?

Question

I do all my investing with Shwab and I have three different accounts. I hate that I can't track my overall portfolio against the s&P. Is there a program or service out there?

Answer 1

Other than switching from Scwhab, you can also enter your data into a number of sites to track your portfolio.

Finance.google.com
finance.yahoo.com
excite.com
prophet.net
and so forth.

Just put in your prices, shares, etc. and it'll track it.

Hope that helps!

Answer 2

I own 3 mutual funds, so it sounds a lot simpler than what you have but this is how I do it using Yahoo! Finance.

I enter the mutual fund in the portfolio I created with number of shares, purchase price & date of purchase.

Then I enter Vanguard 500 Index -VFINX- becuas it tracks the S&P. I enter 1 share purchased, the same date of purchase as the mutual fund & the puchase price of VFINX on that date.

Once it is all entered, everday the daily precentage and overall percentage gain/loss is listed right next to each other. It is easy to tell how my funds are doing compared to the S&P.

I buy and hold long-term, so I can see how this may be too much trouble if you own many stocks or are a relatively active trader.

I use the "performance" view and edit it to my liking if you are going to try it.

I don't know of any other place or way to do it besides calculating it myself when I want. This is much simpler for me because I only own 3 funds.

Answer 3

Find out the rate of return on each of your accounts. Compare that rate to the S&P. You can get the former by looking at your gains. The latter should be available from the Shwab webpage.

Answer 4

Try Beatthebenchmark.net is. Allows to monitor my portfolio in many assets and gives be stuff like benchmarking, even performance attribution. Even also allows to evaluate foreign stocks and how they affect my performance. And I suggest to watch video tutorial, because otherwise might have problems understanding how it works, a bit too complicated at first sight.