Ask HN: Which personal investing tools do you use? - umitakcn
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lewisl9029
I use Quantopian to paper trade a simple algorithm I developed and tweaked
over the years, and then check daily and manually execute the trades with with
my own broker (Questrade in Canada, which isn't supported by Quantopian's live
trading platform).

Quantopian is literally the single most disruptive product in personal finance
that I know of: [https://www.quantopian.com/](https://www.quantopian.com/)

(Not affiliated in any way. Just a really happy user.)

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dracht
That's quite genius, getting people to write trading algorithms for you for
free.

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jeremysalwen
I use [http://investor.vanguard.com](http://investor.vanguard.com) to invest
in very low cost index funds.

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hackerboos
As someone that works for an big investment company ($100B+) this is my only
option.

Insider trading regs mean that we can only trade stocks with prior approval
which can take hours or from a whitelist of ETFs.

Most trading is simply not allowed.

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zck
Betterment. ([https://www.betterment.com/](https://www.betterment.com/)). It's
passive investing done in the tech world. It sets up your portfolio for you
with low-cost investments^1 and low management fees^2. You get automatic
rebalancing with intelligent tax minimization^3 when your account gets too
unbalanced, and every time you auto-deposit cash, it rebalances your account.

If you're looking to pick specific stocks, this isn't the tool for you. But I
want something that gives me control at a high level (how much risk are you
willing to take?), but takes care of the details for me^4. And Betterment
gives me that. It's really a "set it and forget it" solution.

(Note: I interviewed at Betterment, but didn't get an offer. My friend's
brother is employed there on the financial side. I have no financial stake in
Betterment other than the money I've invested there.)

[1] The fund with highest fees I have is Vanguard Emerging Markets Government
Bond ETF, at a 0.34% fund fees. One other fund is 0.25%; everything else is
below 0.20%. These expensive funds are at low percentages of my portfolio.

[2] The most you'll pay is 0.35%:
[https://www.betterment.com/pricing/](https://www.betterment.com/pricing/). If
you have at least $10k, you'll pay 0.25%.

[3]
[http://support.betterment.com/customer/portal/articles/98745...](http://support.betterment.com/customer/portal/articles/987453-how-
and-when-is-my-portfolio-rebalanced-) see "Sell/Buy Rebalancing".

[4] You tell Betterment what your risk tolerance is, and it picks funds for
you, and target levels of these funds. It will automatically purchase these
funds in the right amounts.

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keywonc
Hellomoney: JSFiddle for backtesting investment portfolios.
[http://hellomoney.co/](http://hellomoney.co/)

You can design portfolios from 24,000+ stocks and funds, and backtest it as
you build it. Helps you understand how input (each holding) affects the output
(historical performances) in a "build-to-think" way.

If you frequent finance/investing related parts of Reddit, you might have seen
it. It's the official tool of /r/portfolios now.

* Full disclosure: I designed this tool.

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askafriend
Hey there, just wanted to thank you for an incredibly useful tool! I found it
randomly through Reddit and while it could be a bit more user friendly, I'm so
glad something like this exists.

It would be quite cool to have a mobile version of something like this. I
might take on such a project since I'm a mobile developer :)

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keywonc
Happy to hear you found it useful!

As the designer, I admit it could be more user friendly :sob: Please feel free
to let me know if you have any suggestions.

If you get to create your own mobile tool, I would love to check it out too.

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blabla_blublu
Just started with Betterment - pretty simple to use and acts as a blanket over
investing. I experimented previously with individual stocks in the market, had
reasonably good response. However, I cannot spend time on reading up and
making informed decisions.

Curious how betterment will do against WealthFront. On the longer run, I am
thinking about splitting the money two ways and put in a bit with both
Betterment/Wealth Front as a strategy, possibly.

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lorenzomark4
Check this article from Product Hunt team, there are bunch of tools which can
be useful for savings and investment
[https://medium.com/@producthunt/the-7-best-personal-
finance-...](https://medium.com/@producthunt/the-7-best-personal-finance-apps-
bf1fbd6caa9d#.r4gsykhl2)

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YJwhyjey
[http://seekingalpha.com/](http://seekingalpha.com/) — Good news source

[https://stockcharts.com/](https://stockcharts.com/) — Great chart to guide
you in reading technical analyses.

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Ab91821
I do massive amount of self due diligence before investing in a company or in
a fund.

* Research: Yahoo/Google Finance

* Stock Screen: finviz.com/screener.ashx [https://stockflare.com/landing](https://stockflare.com/landing)

* Portfolio Visualization(Handy):[http://hellomoney.co/](http://hellomoney.co/)

* Portfolio Optimization: [https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-all...](https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/backtest-asset-class-allocation)

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mrfusion
How do you come up with your initial ideas?

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Ab91821
Initial idea can come from news/market trend. Once one industry becomes
somewhat interesting, lots of research comes after. Normally you have to go
through financial statements and ratios of each company and compare these to
the targeted industry. Tools like finviz screener helps graphical/technical
analysis while stockflare tells a short summary of fundamental analysis about
the company itself. If you have other holdings rather than that, portfolio
mgmt is indeed needed.

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chatmasta
I read hacker news and invest in companies that are clearly leading in the
engineering space but wall street buffoons are too stupid to notice. I target
companies with upcoming earnings releases, skim the top few "analyst reports,"
and invest in the ones with gaping holes in the analyses (indicative of stupid
investors).

For example, AMZN is frequently undervalued. If you read analyst reports,
there are scarce mentions of EC2, almost as if the 23 year old bankers writing
the reports _don 't even realize Amazon has a cloud business._ All the reports
of "competition" are focused on Amazon retail competition, no mention of
google cloud, microsoft, etc..

And yet EC2 is absurdly profitable, with margins far higher than Amazon's
retail business. But you wouldn't know that if you just listened to the hot
air coming from "analysts," which is exactly what institutional investors
listen to.

I've had pretty good returns just trusting my own gut and only investing in
tech companies where I am confident I know more than the bankers. If you read
the analyst reports, it will usually be pretty clear whether they're making an
accurate assessment of value.

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baccredited
[https://www.mint.com/](https://www.mint.com/) \- track your net worth

[https://lab.madfientist.com/](https://lab.madfientist.com/) \- track your
FIRE date - Financial Independence Retire Early, otherwise known as FU money
(my date is Dec 2022)

[http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/) \- learn
how to save and invest. And no, you don’t have to be as frugal as Mr Money
Mustache.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)
\- read the sidebar resources and ask questions here if they aren’t answered

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estelleschmitz6
When I try to research a company or an industry, I have a lot of trouble
keeping track of my research. It would be great if there is a service that I
can document and record ideas as well as track key data. My kind of edge that
I have is only the ability to read a balance sheet.

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kleer001
A news paper, a legal pad, a pen, a calculator, and my broker's phone number.
Well, google news, my computer, and schwab. Mostly same same anyways.

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adarsh_thampy
For me, I use Scripbox for my mutual fund investments. There is no customized
portfolio like betterment or wealthfront. Scripbox believes in a one-set-of-
funds approach coupled with annual review and rebalancing for long term
investing. It's available for Indian users.

Full disclosure: I used to work here.

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lethitit
I use r/investing a lot. You can find many tools and experiences.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/](https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/).

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guiness_croquet
Is there a simple tool to estimate returns? I may find it useful.

~~~
kspaans
Canadian Couch Potato and PWL Capital have a rate-of-return calculator:

[http://canadiancouchpotato.com/2015/07/13/calculating-
your-p...](http://canadiancouchpotato.com/2015/07/13/calculating-your-
portfolios-rate-of-return/)

and scroll down to "Use the Rate of Return Calculator":

[https://www.pwlcapital.com/en/Forms/Return-Calculator-
Simple](https://www.pwlcapital.com/en/Forms/Return-Calculator-Simple)

It's a spreadsheet and you just fill in your cashflows.

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o_nate
I use greaterthanzero.com to calculate returns of my portfolio over different
time periods and compare against a few simple benchmarks.

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lavezzi
/r/wallstreetbets

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phyalow
Bloomberg Anywhere.

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myroon5
Wealthfront

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blabla_blublu
What is your take on WealthFront so far as a product ? How has the investment
experience been?

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myroon5
Very easy to set up. The first 15k is managed free, and I am investing less
than that, so very happy with that as well. I chose the least risky option as
I am just trying to keep up with inflation and will probably be withdrawing in
a year or two when I graduate. It gives good visualizations and stats on what
range to expect with each option.

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wj
Finviz

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roodh
Como hackeua instagram ?

