If you‘ve read the previous “getting started” posts, you are now brimming with knowledge and ready to manage a portfolio using the Stockworm toolset :) So, let‘s start with the basics: a stockworm portfolio allows you to track either a real-dollar portfolio (held at a brokerage house) or a mock portfolio. Stockworm portfolios are not linked directly to any brokerage house, so you do need to enter all relevant transactions to keep your portfolio up-to-date. However, you will see that the portfolio autoinvestor page provides a fast mechanism for entering all recommended buys and sells into your portfolio.

To start to track a portfolio, first create a new portfolio. You need to provide the name of the portfolio and starting cash balance (enter '0' for none). You can optionally select a saved strategy to manage your portfolio (you can update this later). After hitting 'create', you will have a new portfolio with the specified cash balance. Important: if you are interested in receiving recommended buys and sells from the autoinvestor, make sure that your cash balance isn‘t zero — the autoinvestor will not issue recommendations if there isn‘t enough cash to purchase stocks.

Over time, you will want to add transactions to your Stockworm portfolio. Fortunately, Stockworm has a rich set of transaction types to enhance the accuracy of your portfolio tracking:

• stock purchases
• stock sales
• cash deposits
• cash withdrawals
• stock dividends
• cash dividends
• account incomes
• account fees

Each of these transactions are easily entered using links shown on the left of each portfolio page.

As you enter transactions, you will likely wish to see different views of your portfolio. All portfolio views provide a quick summary of your portfolio:

1. holdings view – view a summary of your current portfolio holdings.
2. performance view – view the performance of the portfolio over time; includes a performance plot which can be extensively customized.
3. transactions view – view/edit/delete portfolio transactions
4. autoinvestor view – view current autoinvestor recommendations for the portfolio and quickly add these recommendations to your portfolio.

Once you are accurately tracking a portfolio, you are ready to manage the portfolio with autoinvestor recommendations. This is the topic of the next forum post.