On a daily basis, I do a couple of things…

  • Daily news & chart briefing
  • Monitor news and markets during the day
  • Review positions to see if I should sell anything (preferably before close of day)
  • End of day review

Here is a bit more meat on the points:

I do a morning review usually while having breakfast, before the equity markets open. I have a set of bookmarks in Firefox that I open all at once (the “open in tabs” feature). Reviewing them takes me about 5 minutes or less, and I am more or less on top of what the major markets have been doing and what the Wall Street press are focused on (thanks to Reuters).

I have two tools that I use to monitor the markets and my holdsings during the day as well as after the equity markets close. I have a spreadsheet that has automatically updated stock quotes (powered by XLQ) and I also have a custom webpage that I created to monitor markets. With these two tools, I can review what the market is doing and identify any unusual activity within a minute or two.

At the end of the day I review my spreadsheet that I use to track my portfolio (XLQ powered) and update the spreadsheet if necessary. I use the spreadsheet to track my stop-losses, and part of that is updating the highest closing price for a security since I bought it. (XLQ Plus supposedly will do some of this for you, but I developed my spreadsheet before the “Plus” version was released and it works great for me.)

I also download everything into Quicken, usually at the end of the day. I specifically chose banks and brokers that offer “one-click-download” into Quicken so that I save time getting the latest trade transactions or price quotes. Quicken has issues with getting the latest prices for pink sheets and OTC shares as well as options, so if I have those types of positions, I usually update those prices by hand.

As for news and commentary… that’s more ad-hoc and varies day to day. I don’t read any particular blog consistently, though I make a point to read Mauldin‘s weekly newsletters when they arrive via email.