Comments on: A Peek Inside Vanguard’s Portfolio Watch

By: MITBeta @ Don't Feed The Alligators

MITBeta @ Don't Feed The Alligators — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:47:53 +0000

As a result of what I can only guess was the manual entry of non-Vanguard accounts and balances into Portfolio Analysis, I recently received a mailing from Vanguard welcoming me as a Voyager member. My combined balances add up to over $100k, but my Vanguard balances alone do not. Interesting.

But in any case, I just checked, and I now have the Portfolio Watch button instead of the Portfolio Analysis button. This seems like a pretty easy way to con the system. Just manually enter 1 share of Bershire Hathaway A shares and bam, you’re a Voyager member.

By: nickel

nickel — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:31:30 +0000

2million & Flexo: It’s interesting that you’re having trouble tracking things without symbols. I have a TIAA-CREF account that has holdings without symbols. In my case, Portfolio Watch slurps the balances and names of the holdings in, but doesn’t know how to categorize them, so it sticks them under “Other.”

The good news is that you can specify the type of holding so it categorizes it properly. For example, my total bond market fund I was able to tell it to categorize them as bonds, and the term as intermediate (identical to the other total bond market funds). So… No more “Other” category. It handles everything properly now.

Check it out before you decide against using it.

By: 2million

2million — Fri, 09 May 2008 07:19:31 +0000

I tried out Portfolio Watch a couple months ago and agree its got potential, but I got fustrated with it. Like Flexo — my 401k investments couldn’t be tracked because they don’t have symbols. It also had trouble categorizing some investments. Other accounts had problems updating.

However, its the best tool I found so far — much better than anything MS Money has available.

By: Zook

Zook — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:17:10 +0000

I know my financial firms are doing this. I personally used BOA ‘My Portfolio’, which has all of our accounts aggregated and makes life very simple as far as figuring out our asset allocation. For folks that don’t have $100K with Vanguard, I would highly recommend a service like ‘My Portfolio’. You can even link up your JetBlue rewards points, Verizon cable and cell-phones bills etc. etc. all into one place.

By: MITBeta @ Don't Feed The Alligators

MITBeta @ Don't Feed The Alligators — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 01:37:25 +0000

From Vanguard concerning my account:

Portfolio Watch is a tool that is almost identical to Portfolio Analysis
except Portfolio Watch is only available to clients enrolled in Vanguard’s
Enhanced Services (with Vanguard assets greater than and equal to
$100,000).

By: George

George — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:31:21 +0000

Thanks for sharing this information about Vanguard’s Portfolio Watch. I hadn’t heard about this useful feature. Some of my members at Fat Pitch Financials Contributor’s Corner were interested finding such a feature to deal with tracking all of their investment accounts.

By: ashtar

ashtar — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:49:08 +0000

I don’t think you have to be a higher level customer. I just recently opened the STAR fund (lowest minimum possible) and I see that feature on my account.

By: nickel

nickel — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:30:55 +0000

Flexo: Interesting you should mention that… I foresaw similar problems with TIAA-CREF and so, when we re-did our allocation, I made sure that account wound up holding funds with symbols.

By: Flexo

Flexo — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:32:16 +0000

The option’s available to me, and I have a small amount of money in Vanguard accounts. I really liked the tool. The only drawback was that some of my 401(k) funds (held at and administered by the company I work for) do not have symbols, and thus, Vanguard cannot provide consolidated info for me. Otherwise, it would be very handy.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:13:21 +0000

That’s definitely possible, and I’m not . Just have a small holding so far in a single fund and recently rolled over a 401k there but haven’t quite hit the Voyager (or Flagship!) level.

By: nickel

nickel — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:25:29 +0000

Andrew: Interesting. Are you a Voyager (or above) customer? Perhaps this functionality is limited to “higher level” customers? I’m not sure.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 18:20:48 +0000

Hmm my tabs at Vanguard look different. My third tab is called portfolio analysis instead of portfolio watch. And when I go to add external investments it doesn’t give me the option to put in the log-in credentials.

Instead I can only input what I own manually, which while useful, is not really feasible given the ongoing contributions, etc. to each of these other investments.

By: nickel

nickel — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:54:41 +0000

JFS: Great point. However, these are all index funds tracking major indices, so I’m not too concerned about allocations drifting around over time within funds.

By: JFS

JFS — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 17:49:20 +0000

Nice job. However, before making a final decision, make sure the profile of how your funds are allocated are updated. Too many times decisions are being made from information provided by Yahoo or MSN that is incorrect or 3 to 6 month old.

By: Jesse

Jesse — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:30:42 +0000

Where do you primarily invest in your international funds? Mostly large cap blends as well?

By: CF

CF — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:56:49 +0000

Thanks for this post! I’ve been signing up for and then canceling premier membership with Morningstar each year to run their detailed X-ray, which is an excellent tool, but as a Vanguard investor, I’ll give this a try.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:27:46 +0000

Good summary.
One thing everyone should keep in mind is that this does entail giving vanguard all your account info. I got comfortable with it (and you did too), but some people may not be able to.
I actually found a bust in the feature the other day, unfortunately. I ran a situation where I had a large drop in my checking account (taxes). Somehow that changed my allocation between domestic and international stocks (as a percentage of total equities). It didn’t change it much (10 bps), but it was odd that it would change at all.
Don’t know why that would have happened, but I think as a snapshot tool, it’s still great.