Welcome to our new and returning users. There’s a lot of functionality provided in TradeStops to help you become a more self-directed investor. Today, we’ll review some of the tips and tricks of using TradeStops on your current and watchlist portfolios. It should take about 20 minutes for you to follow along with all these items, so settle in and get ready for a great review.
TradeStops Portfolio Tab
In TradeStops, your broker accounts and watchlists are stored in portfolios on our Portfolio tab. We break up your Investment and Watchlist portfolios for ease of navigation.
Your List of Portfolios
Once you select Investment or Watch Only, you’ll see the list of your portfolios (provided you’ve added your portfolios already).
Here are the portfolio basics to keep in mind:
- You can click the white box to open the option to delete your portfolio or click the small downward-pointing triangle to see more portfolio options (1).
- Type tells you if your portfolio is Manual or Synced (2).
- The Sync Date tells you when your portfolio was last synced. If your portfolio is manual, you can ignore this column. If you’ve synced your portfolio, you’ll want this date to be today or yesterday’s date (3).
Beyond this basic information, you’ll see the statistics for your portfolio, such as your number of alerts and positions, cash, gains, and much more.
To view the positions in a portfolio, simply click the portfolio name.
Positions & Alerts Tab
Here, you will find your positions, alerts, and closed positions for your portfolio. At the top of this page, you’ll see some portfolio stats like Value, Total Gain, and Daily Gain. There is also a handy portfolio summary drop-down menu.
Making Positions, Alerts, or Closed Positions Active
Remember, we said when a blue line is under an option, it is the active item you’re viewing. The same applies when you’re on the Positions & Alerts tab. Below the portfolio summary box, you should see the Positions, Alerts, and Closed Positions options.
In the screenshot above, Positions has the blue line under it. This means we’re viewing our positions on this page. To switch to Alerts or Closed Positions, simply click the option to make it active.
Position & Alerts Views
Within this section, there are columns of data for your positions. You might like some of this data, and you might want to know other data about the position. You can edit the columns with custom views.
On the right side of the page, you’ll see your custom views. The active view is colored in gray.
Click the pencil in the active view to edit that view. Alternatively, you can click Add View to create a new view entirely.
In the page that appears, you can edit the information that you want to see (or not see).
Checked options will be included in your view. White boxes will not be included in the view. Once you’ve selected the information you’d like to include, save your changes. The columns of data will then appear each time you use this view.
Position & Alerts Tab Basics
While the three tabs on this page have different options, the functionality is basically the same.
Let’s learn more:
- Clicking the white box lets you delete, move, copy, edit, and add alerts to positions. The drop-down triangle does all that, plus allows you to see corporate actions (1).
- Status lets you know about your alerts. On the positions tab, these bells will be colored in black or white. Black bells mean you have an alert set for the position. White means you have no alerts set (2). Note that on the alerts tab, these bells will be white (not triggered) or purple (triggered).
- The SSI tells you the state of the investment (3). The letters and numbers tell you how long the position has been in that state.
- The VQ tells you the volatility of the position. The higher the number, the more volatility in that position (4).
You can click on the tickers to learn even more about individual positions. For an in-depth guide on working with positions individually, check out this Position Card Page guide.
Review Your Positions Today
We hope this guide helps you review your positions. There’s so much to learn with this program, but it can be easy if you take it one step at a time. Next week, we’ll review the Research tools and the Newsletter center. Stay tuned…
Sincerely,
TradeSmith Success Team
