Stock Rover (SR) Pointers, Revision 1There are several Stock Rover (SR) links for Help, FAQs, etc, so I will not try to prepare a “Guide”. Rather, as the SR site is not very user-friendly or intuitive, I will give some POINTERS for new users.
NAVIGATION is difficult. Some features/functions appear only on relevant pages/tabs. Page FRAMES can be expanded or shrunk – note up-pointing and side-pointing ARROWS; down-pointing arrows only open the MENUS.
FREE version is very limited. It allows creation of 10 (max) Portfolios and Watchlists but doesn’t allow Table-displays or any analytics. DASHBOARD will show overall summaries including portfolio value, G/L, daily changes; PORTFOLIO right-PANEL (expandable with side-arrow) shows basic portfolio details. If you want to use SR just for QUOTES and CHARTS, the FREE version may be fine.
CHARTS are not linkable but can be SAVED as images (so, this eliminates taking a screenshot). To POST them elsewhere, use copy-and-paste, site upload/attachment feature or an image hosting site link to share/post.
WATCHLISTS have tickers only, but PORTFOLIOS have tickers, quantities, purchase prices.
PORTFOLIO details and analytics are available with PREMIUM and PREMIUM PLUS. Premium has full portfolio functionality, but Premium Plus allows for larger (600 tickers vs 250 tickers) and more (60 vs 25) Portfolios and Watchlists. Premium Plus has many other advanced features. Unfortunately, Essentials doesn’t have much portfolio functionality. So, PREMIUM should be fine for serious portfolio users.
www.stockrover.com/plans/why-go-premium/Portfolios to be IMPORTED should have required Excel columns for tickers, quantities, costs/share. For M* Portfolio (that don’t have these 3 columns present in any tab/view), use Export from Tracking==>Gain/Loss to your PC. Insert a column for Tickers and add tickers (using another M* tab/view or from memory), then IMPORT into SR; Name/Rename (see below). SR Portfolio basically starts fresh from the import date; old transaction history at M* (or elsewhere) will be lost. Multiple Portfolios can be COMBINED.
For SR-IMPORT, Click PORTFOLIO on the left-menu, make sure that Portfolio HEADING is clicked/highlighted in the main page (down-ARROW will show full Menu), then from the Menu or the right-PANEL, choose CREATE PORTFOLIO. Entries can then be made MANUALLY, or portfolio IMPORTED from Excel (with Tickers, quantities, costs/share columns), or via CONNECTION to selected brokerages (I won't be trying that). Steps are similar for importing a WATCHLIST, but some options shown are different. In Importing .xls or .csv data, VERIFY that all tickers transferred properly; in the Import of long Watchlists, several tickers were found missing later without any apparent reasons/explanations; special NAV tickers (XPDIX for PDI, etc) are not recognized (Edit 7/26/22).
SR says that IMPORT with Tickers and PERCENTS (Prices optional) is possible only with .csv and .txt files (but not .xls or xlsx). I started with PV % portfolio and removed all extraneous information (unlike the PV upload, SR didn’t ignore the information beyond blank lines). But I couldn’t make it work with .csv; it didn’t recognize % and didn’t ask for cash amount (but had built-in CASH$ ticker). It WORKED WITH .TXT; the % were correct, the amounts/values added up to the specified cash amount, and portfolio Cash was 0.0.
Portfolio TOOLS/Future SIMULATION can be used to conduct SYSTEMATIC WITHDRAWAL/INVESTMENT studies with various other options.
CASH row can be displayed in Portfolio Table (from Portfolio, EXPAND Portfolio panel to see the option for cash display). ADJUSTING CASH (transactional) is by click on every buy/sell. Fully SOLD positions are not deleted from the record (so that performance calculations remain accurate).
PRICES are delayed 1-5-15 minutes. Tables and charts REFRESH manually on browser refresh but can be set to Auto-Refresh at 1-5-10 minutes (OFF by default) in Preferences for Premium and Premium Plus.
Mutual fund DAILY price CHANGES are updated/indicated late, after 8:30 PM EST/9:30 PM EDT. MF PRICES are updated only after the market open the next day to make the daily change data meaningful.
LAST-CLOSE prices are updated after next market open. This is to properly indicate price change data. (this is unusual as most want complete updates by evening, but SR notes that this would make all changes 0)
VOLATILITY/standard deviation (SD; 1-yr, 3-yr) is based on DAILY returns and then ANNUALIZED (using sqrt(252) = 15.87 or 16); multiply by 100 to show as %. The SR SD values are much higher than those from M* and Portfolio Visualizer (PV) that use monthly returns. Unfortunately, SR just uses a WEIGHTED-AVERAGE of component SDs for PORTFOLIO SD and that is an overestimation (as it ignores cross-correlations). SUMMARY VALUES in portfolio Tables are also weighted-averages* (so, not good for Portfolio MPT data) except for ratios such as P/E, P/B, P/S etc for which harmonic-averages are used. Negative P/Es are replaced by blanks.
YIELDS are forward yields. FUND YIELDS include CG distributions. Most financial data are for CALENDAR years and for GAAP accounting with applicable RESTATEMENTS. DIVIDENDS are shown as cash and must be reinvested manually. However, Portfolio Analytics does dividend reinvesting internally.
Portfolio DIVIDEND REINVESTMENTS have to be done MANUALLY by using information in Portfolio TOOLS/Future Income. The Date Menu shows January 1 (last year, current year), 3-mo ago, and the current month, and there are views/tabs for Summary Level (income for months, quarters, years), Portfolio Level (monthly income details), HOLDING Level (months, dates, tickers, payouts). Use this last Holding Level information to enter reinvestments as NEW purchases and also ADJUST CASH (add). Set aside some time MONTHLY, probably in the 1st week or mid-month, to make all dividend reinvestments. If you skip a month, you will have to catch up later; if you skip many months, then the portfolios will not be good reflections of the actual situation. Alternate would be to use brokerage connection to keep portfolios up to date (I don’t plan to do that). Alternate2 would be to keep Importing M* Portfolios (after using their Dividends/Splits feature) until they finally go away.
Dividend dates shown are 1-2 days after the ex-dividend dates (payout dates?) and the data keep changing around the ex-dividend dates, I suppose from estimates to actual (even disappearing for a while for updates). So, wait a few days before manual updating. For mutual fund holdings, one may want to use the ex-dividend dates (from other sources such as M*; SR doesn't show them anywhere) for manually entering the reinvestments. All dividend amounts shown will be adjusted to reflect the additional shares.
All dividend reinvestments should be done BEFORE entering new transactions. The Future Income screen shows future income and past histories based on the CURRENT positions only (it doesn't show a historical record of past dividends).
Position UPDATES can be done in several ways (with different options):
From Portfolio/POSITIONS/Add Position (+/- Quantity, Commission, Adjust Cash);
From Portfolio/TRANSACTIONS/Add Trade (Buy/Sell, no Commission, no Adjust Cash);
From TABLE/Select 1 ticker (to Buy/Sell, Adjust Cash) or Select multiple tickers (to Buy All Equally/Sell All, Adjust Cash, no Commission) and
Click Trade in Portfolio (current or another or new, no Commission); Cash cannot be adjusted from Table.
In ADDITION, some holding CELLS can be edited in Portfolio/Positions (Quantity, Cost/Share, Cost Basis, Value; only Cost for Cash) and
Portfolio/Transaction (Quantity, Price, Amount, Balance; only Price for Cash).
If ADJUST CASH is not clicked or available, then appropriate offsets have to be done Manually from Portfolio/Transactions/Adjust Cash.
DASHBOARD change data will take a while to stabilize as the entire portfolio amount becomes the change from day 0 (when the portfolio was Imported).
TABLE is a formal menu item with very detailed column displays (with several Headings/Views and Subheadings within). These columns can be modified from their column menus – Create, Remove, Renamed, etc) and can be repositioned by DRAGGING sideways. To ADD Columns, use the Add Column search (in the top Menu bar), or use a 2-step process: Click on a Column Heading/View in the TABLE, click on METRIC BROWSER from the left menu/panel under More Tools, and click on desired metrics – they will be added to the selected column Heading/View. WAIT a while to make column changes because there doesn’t seem to be a restore-to-original function/click. To EXPERIMENT, create a new column Heading/View and add/delete new column metrics there. The word table is also used generically and that may create confusion at times.
SUBSCRIPTIONS can be cancelled (effective at the end of the billing period only) but are not partially refundable. Switching among them changes the level of access but preserves settings and data. There are monthly, annual, and 2-yr plans; payment can be by card, PayPal or check. Free trial is 14-day, no-obligation for Premium Plus (switchable during free trial); at the end of the trial period, it becomes Free plan if a pay-plan is not selected.
LIMITATIONS
SR system is POSITIONS-based, not TRANSACTIONS-based. INTRADAY trades are netted for the day; holding SALE prices are closing prices only (default) – so all G/L are approximations.
COMMENTS (simpler) and NOTES (elaborate) are “global” at holding level. Their columns can be added to Table displays via Metric Browser in the left-menu. Unfortunately, “global” means that Comments/Notes for a holding will appear in all portfolios that have that holding, so these features are not useful for portfolio level Comments/Notes. A trick can be to have unique holdings within the portfolios and put portfolio level comments/notes there but that seems too cumbersome.
Edit/Add, 4/11/23. The availability of different features for Position UPDATES (via Portfolio/Transactions, Portfolio/Positions, Table/Ticker-menu) has been noted above. Two tricks were found:
i) MONEY-MARKET Fund positions can be adjusted only from Table/Ticker-menu (but NOT from Portfolio/Transactions or Portfolio/Positions).
ii) While there is no obvious way to add NEW positions from Table, a workaround is to add ticker in Quote, checkmark it, then it will show in ALL Table portfolios (as bold if ticker not held; make sure that the button to insert tickers into the Table is ON), and then "Trade in Portfolio" can be used to add it as new positions in selected portfolios. This can also be done directly from the Quote list(s).
Edit/Add, 10/10/23. For newer funds, SR calculates Beta and Volatility (SD) from the data available and uses that for 1-yr and 3-yr Beta and Volatility. While this is reasonable, no warning is issues for it.
Example. New
TCAF, 6/14/23- . Then, 1-yr and 3-yr beta = 0.88, and 1-yr and 3-yr Volatility = 0.11.
Accessible from Morningstar (M*), Mutual Fund Observer (MFO), Twitter (“at”YBB_Finance).
