How do you manage your stock alerts?

Huggy_Beard

I'm interested to know what apps you might use to monitor stock performance, and what are the most meaningful triggers you have for notifications.

I have savings in a few different S&S ISA funds, and recently decided to follow the individual stocks that constituted the largest parts of those funds.
The app I use is called MarketCue but I know there are others that might be more useful. Marketcue lets me bundle stocks to follow, but it doesn't give an aggregate report on the bundle - still the only way to review the fund's performance is manually logging into their customer portal and understanding the data. Currently, I get an overview and have set each stock to a 10% daily drop as the trigger alert. Maybe that's too high? How would I know? 

I know that with my current setup, I can't suddenly sell/buy on a whim, but I want to get alerted if the whole fund finds itself on a downward trajectory, so that if it feels like the whole market is on a downward trajectory, I can move all/some of my savings into cash until I feel more comfortable having the savings invested in this way.

I'd also like to know how to evaluate acceptable performance parameters. For example, is a three-day consistent daily drop of 2% for the fund as a whole a sign that should worry me? 

So I'm keen to know how others do it, and how do you calibrate it so that you understand the information, and you're not being warned too late or too early?

JohnWinder

Huggy_Beard said:

I'd also like to know how to evaluate acceptable performance parameters. For example, is a three-day consistent daily drop of 2% for the fund as a whole a sign that should worry me? 

If you're in the accumulation phase of investing, that would be a sign to get down on your knees and thank the Lord for the chance to buy on the cheap, and the bigger the fall the more thanks offered. If you're living off your investments on the other hand you'd be relieved to recall that you set up your investments to weather wobbles much more substantial than 6% in 3 days.

eskbanker

Huggy_Beard said:

I want to get alerted if the whole fund finds itself on a downward trajectory, so that if it feels like the whole market is on a downward trajectory, I can move all/some of my savings into cash until I feel more comfortable having the savings invested in this way.

I'd also like to know how to evaluate acceptable performance parameters. For example, is a three-day consistent daily drop of 2% for the fund as a whole a sign that should worry me? 

So I'm keen to know how others do it, and how do you calibrate it so that you understand the information, and you're not being warned too late or too early?

Sounds like you're trying to time the market - if you've invested at an appropriate level for your risk tolerance (and investment objectives) then a short term drop of 6% shouldn't be seen as material or warranting action, unless you feel that buying high and selling low is a viable strategy?  Or are you trading rather than investing?

Huggy_Beard

Thanks @JohnWinder, That helps me with this specific example. I'd however like to understand what should guide me in setting up the parameters, and go beyond just single specific examples.

Looking at how the investment portfolio has fallen and rallied in the past, and ascertaining at which points I would have been minded to pull my money out, I might try to calculate what the percentage drop was, and over how many days, and set my alerts accordingly.

People advise that with long-term investments, we weather the wobbles, as you put it. I'm happy to do that, and I appreciate that when you sell on a downward trajectory, you can miss the benefit of a rebound, especially an immediate one. I don't want to drop sail as soon as a wave hits. I just want to identify the signs of a hurricane coming!

fwor

I doubt you'll find many people here who manage their investments in the way that you suggest.

I certainly don't monitor on a daily basis, and the last thing I would look to do is to sell after 3 days (for example) of falls.

Most people here would, I think,  consider daily movements as near-irrelevant "noise". For me it's the longer-term aggregated performance that's a factor in my (roughly) annual review of which funds to keep and which to change, and I don't tend to change often - maybe one or two fund swaps a year at most.

The only time when big moves are of interest are the big buying opportunities - such as March 2020 - when the whole market drops like a stone and there's a good chance to buy cheap.  But you don't need a complex stock monitor to see something like that...

Huggy_Beard

PS I'm not in the accumulation phase. I'm in the "I have made what feels like a lot from interest in the last year, and don't want to watch it all disappear" phase.

coyrls

Huggy_Beard said:

PS I'm not in the accumulation phase. I'm in the "I have made what feels like a lot from interest in the last year, and don't want to watch it all disappear" phase.

If you've made all the money you'll ever need, sell now.

JohnWinder

Huggy_Beard said:

 I don't want to drop sail as soon as a wave hits. I just want to identify the signs of a hurricane coming!

That's what every one of the many thousand fund managers, whose mandate allows it, around the globe want to do, yet we know from the SPIVA reports that a large majority can't pull it off consistently or even do better than just leaving it invested in an index fund. Why would you imagine that you'll be able to do what most of them can't do, with all their resources, charts, research, analysts and Bloomberg terminals? Probably just forget it, unless it's to entertain yourself. If there was a way, it probably would have leaked out by now, or been outlawed.

Huggy_Beard said:

That helps me with this specific example. I'd however like to understand what should guide me in setting up the parameters, and go beyond just single specific examples.

I think the answer would be the same, whatever figures you gave. Having chosen your investments because you understand their characteristics and have a sense of their long term history and gyrations (or not), what price movements could come as a surprise that would make you change course with your strategy?

Huggy_Beard

eskbanker said:

Huggy_Beard said:

I want to get alerted if the whole fund finds itself on a downward trajectory, so that if it feels like the whole market is on a downward trajectory, I can move all/some of my savings into cash until I feel more comfortable having the savings invested in this way.

I'd also like to know how to evaluate acceptable performance parameters. For example, is a three-day consistent daily drop of 2% for the fund as a whole a sign that should worry me? 

So I'm keen to know how others do it, and how do you calibrate it so that you understand the information, and you're not being warned too late or too early?

Sounds like you're trying to time the market - if you've invested at an appropriate level for your risk tolerance (and investment objectives) then a short term drop of 6% shouldn't be seen as material or warranting action, unless you feel that buying high and selling low is a viable strategy?  Or are you trading rather than investing?

I'm investing, so I don't want to be moving my money around on a regular basis, or on a whim, to try and gain from every movement of the market. I've adopted a medium risk tolerance. Most of the advice steers towards "markets have ups and downs, but generally have an upward trajectory over time, so just leave it be". But the fact remains that you can stop yourself losing a lot of money if you decide to bank it. I'm far more concerned about losing what I've gained than about losing an opportunity to gain more.

But I can't help but feel there is worldwide instability at present as we move out of covid-19, and I'd like to be sufficiently conscious to identify a significant drop in my investment value as soon as it happens, as a prompt to examine my financial situation more closely and establish whether I want to choose this moment to reduce my level of risk.

My problem at the moment is that I have no real markers for my own investment performance, so I hear news reports or opinion pieces or tweets about the global financial situation, and it reminds me that I have not checked to see how my money has been doing for the last few weeks. If it has been dropping consistently, I don't want some random news item being the thing that prompts me to check.

kuratowski

Better results are usually obtained by checking less frequently, not more.

Wasn't it Fidelity whose research showed that the clients with the best returns were the ones who had died (because they were the ones who never changed their portfolios)?

Prism

JohnWinder said:

Huggy_Beard said:

 I don't want to drop sail as soon as a wave hits. I just want to identify the signs of a hurricane coming!

That's what every one of the many thousand fund managers, whose mandate allows it, around the globe want to do, yet we know from the SPIVA reports that a large majority can't pull it off consistently or even do better than just leaving it invested in an index fund. Why would you imagine that you'll be able to do what most of them can't do, with all their resources, charts, research, analysts and Bloomberg terminals? Probably just forget it, unless it's to entertain yourself. If there was a way, it probably would have leaked out by now, or been outlawed.

Huggy_Beard said:

That helps me with this specific example. I'd however like to understand what should guide me in setting up the parameters, and go beyond just single specific examples.

I think the answer would be the same, whatever figures you gave. Having chosen your investments because you understand their characteristics and have a sense of their long term history and gyrations (or not), what price movements could come as a surprise that would make you change course with your strategy?

I am not invested in a single managed fund where I see any evidence of a manager trying to time the market by selling or buying anything. All of mine stay fully invested rain or shine. I would say that most fund managers accept they can't do this at all and don't even try - which is kind of the point I guess.