To make informed and logical investments, use a watchlist. It’s not just about keeping an eye on the market; it’s about making smarter decisions with your money. Here’s why:
- Boosts Research: Having a watchlist nudges you into researching stocks or assets you’re curious about. This helps avoid snap decisions based on fleeting emotions or market hype.
- Speeds Up Decisions: With a watchlist, you get updates on stocks you care about, helping you act quickly on market changes. Say goodbye to investment opportunities missed due to hesitation or delay.
- Supports Diversification: Watching a range of assets from different sectors helps you spread your investments, minimizing risk while potentially increasing returns. It’s about not putting all your eggs in one basket.
- Allows Personalization: Your investment goals and risk tolerance are unique. A watchlist helps tailor your investment approach to fit just what you’re looking for, avoiding the one-size-fits-all trap.
- Fosters Discipline: Regularly checking your watchlist keeps you disciplined, ensuring you’re not swayed by sudden market swings or speculative trends. It’s about consistent, focused oversight.
- Promotes Learning: The act of maintaining a watchlist is a learning journey. You get to understand market patterns, the impact of global events on prices, and fine-tune your strategy based on real-world outcomes.
In short, a watchlist is a powerful tool, helping make your investment process more intentional and less reactive. It’s about making informed choices, staying disciplined, and continuously learning for better financial outcomes.
Keep reading to learn more, why they are valuable, and how that tool is available to you.
What is a Watchlist?
A watchlist is a tool that helps you keep track of stocks you’re interested in. It’s a list that contains all the stocks you want to monitor, whether you discovered them through a screening process or chose them yourself.
Watchlists are flexible. You can create a watchlist based on a single screen or combine multiple screens. You can also manually add or remove stocks. The watchlist automatically includes all the stocks that match your chosen screens while excluding any stocks you’ve specifically mentioned to exclude.
Watchlists allow you to easily monitor your stocks from your home screen, providing a clear overview of your investment opportunities and helping you make informed decisions.
Here’s an example of a watchlist on our home screen:
You can easily see the stocks you are watching and how they are performing, based on their shade.
Why Watchlists are Valuable
Financial advisors might have a set of watchlists for various reasons. These reasons become a staple for accurate information.
| Summary | Description |
|---|---|
| Daily Screener Info | Receive daily updates on the screeners you’ve created. |
| Market Risk Management | Manage risk by keeping an eye on market trends. |
| Performance-Based Investments | Invest in assets showing positive performance. |
| Stock Maintenance | Hold onto stocks that fulfill specific criteria. |
Below is an image of the watchlist from our first tutorial. In that tutorial we backtested for P/E and Market Cap. As you can see various stocks are shown from this watchlist. (Green indicates positive performance, red shows negative, and grey indicating a more neutral performance.)
From just a glance, we can see which stocks are a risk, which might be worth an investment, and which to watch for a potential investment.
Equities Lab
Watchlists are an invaluable tool to make keeping track of your stocks easier. Here are a few features in Equities Lab that enhance your watchlist experience:
- Heat map for visual indicators.
- Multiple perspectives of the watchlist (graph, candlestick charts, daily gain/loss table, etc.).
- Daily updates so you always have the most recent information.
- Recommendations to “sell” if a stock doesn’t meet the screener’s criteria anymore.
- Accessible exploration using other sources.
- Make notes of your findings that you can look back on in the future.
| Feature | Why use it |
|---|---|
| Heat map for visual indicators. | See your matches visually |
| Multiple analytic displays, such as graphs, daily table, and results breakdown | Data is easier to understand with multiple perspectives |
| Buy/sell recommendations | Stay up to date with buy/sell recommendations, updated at rebalance periods |
| Per-stock links to other sources | Quickly look up your stock with stockcharts, the SEC and more. |
| Notes, indexed by day | Capture thought processes, strategies, and market observations as you trade on them |
In the below image on the upper right hand you will see a section where you can place all the stocks you might’ve bought that weren’t from your watchlist that you still want to keep an eye on. You can also see a visual of the heatmap. Here you can keep track of current stocks while looking for new investments.
Watch a Watchlist
If you choose not to use watchlists in your financial investment journey, you are only making it harder on yourself. A watchlist is a quick way to get informed data-driven investment opportunities with just a glance.
Check out another perspective of watchlists, and see if Equities Lab’s watchlists are right for you to help you enhance your finance journey.
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