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Getty ImagesPeople are starting to think more about saving–and investing–than spending, which is perhaps the sole upside to the market turmoil. Being an investing geek has become much more socially acceptable, and companies are taking notice.
In the last few weeks, several start-ups and familiar names have added, changed or completely revamped their online investing offerings. There are so many nest-egg incubators out there that we haven’t even had a chance to dive fully into them all. Here’s what’s new:
- Investment research firm Morningstar has relaunched its home page with more analytic content upfront. Fund fanatics will relish the new reports (still in beta) that allow you to research past fund performance and what their stakes are. It’s charts all over the place, but much more engaging than a prospectus. Besides monitoring your own investments, you can also share your portfolio with other users and get a star rating.
- Budgeting hub Mint now allows you to track your investments. You can track whether or not you’re beating the market and what your returns are like, but even more helpful (in our view), the site breaks out how much you’re paying in fees, a figure normally buried in the fine print.
- Active traders with Charles Schwab can try new tools for risk management–enhanced alerts on trades, bracket-order technology and more charting options. Again, this is for active traders, so not everyone qualifies, nor does everyone with Schwab account need a minute-by-minute alert of what the market is doing. We just thought we’d point it out, in case that’s your thing. Schwab’s regular trade portal has also been upgraded.
- And now, time to make friends. MarketGuru is a social-networking site for portfolio fanatics. Investors create profiles with their allocations and communicate about what they’re doing and why. You can share investing triumphs and tragedies in the forums and follow other members whose investing styles interest you. A clean layout makes sifting through the mounds of information much easier.
- PortfolioMonkey is a new site that, like Mint, is geared toward more-casual investors. The site promises not only to help you view your investments, but also serves up recommendations on allocations and new investing ideas. We haven’t used this one yet, but we’d love to hear how the recommendations have worked out for people.
- Stockalicious is another start-up that combines portfolio monitoring with sharing. The site says it helps you examine how many of your positions are winning and losing, your investing cash flow and whether or not you’ve overtraded. You can even create a widget of your portfolio. The ridiculously adorable icons are a plus.
- Finally, financial-services giant Fidelity will unroll a new version of its homepage over the next month, with expanded content provided by their in-house experts and providers like Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal. It’s all free, including a peer-comparison tool, various calculators and markets data.
Or you can handle your portfolio the same way many readers are–by not opening their statements.
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