# Google finance > shutting down portfolio feature



## BoringInvestor (Sep 12, 2013)

https://support.google.com/finance/answer/7534448 

If you're currently using Google Finance to view/manage your portfolio you have until mid-November to download your transactions.
After that time the portfolio feature will be removed.


----------



## Pluto (Sep 12, 2013)

do you have a recomendation for what to move to?


----------



## BoringInvestor (Sep 12, 2013)

I'll keep using my own (messy, hard to share) spreadsheet.

I've heard of others using the Boggleheads spreadsheet: https://www.bogleheads.org/blog/theres-a-spreadsheet-for-that/.
I can't vouch for it as I haven't use it, but it seems like a possible solution.


----------



## newuser (Sep 16, 2014)

That's too bad. :-(

I've been using my own spreadsheet downloaded from http://portfolioslicer.com/. It even can publish to the web using the PowerBI demo. But one day that demo will expire too so I need another web based one. Maybe I'll start using Yahoo portfolios again.


----------



## like_to_retire (Oct 9, 2016)

newuser said:


> That's too bad. :-(
> 
> I've been using my own spreadsheet downloaded from http://portfolioslicer.com/. It even can publish to the web using the PowerBI demo. But one day that demo will expire too so I need another web based one. Maybe I'll start using Yahoo portfolios again.


Best to write your own spreadsheet and you won't have to rely on the largess of web companies to keep track. With your own spreadsheet, the sky is the limit on customization, and you can have fun while learning new programming skills.

ltr


----------



## fatcat (Nov 11, 2009)

Pluto said:


> do you have a recomendation for what to move to?


i have tried yahoo and it wasn’t bad though now i just use td and then a spreadsheet at the end of the week where i download and paste numbers and keep dividends up to date

yahoo is where a lot of the services get their numbers


----------



## BeautifulAngel (Jun 30, 2017)

Damn, I didn't even know there was such thing.

Honestly, this is wayyy easier than what I'm currently doing (writing everything in my "finance" binder.


----------



## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

like_to_retire said:


> Best to write your own spreadsheet and you won't have to rely on the largess of web companies to keep track. With your own spreadsheet, the sky is the limit on customization, and you can have fun while learning new programming skills.
> 
> ltr


It is also less likely to be used by Google for market research, or hacked for private info.


----------



## gibor365 (Apr 1, 2011)

BeautifulAngel said:


> Damn, I didn't even know there was such thing.
> 
> Honestly, this is wayyy easier than what I'm currently doing (writing everything in my "finance" binder.


I also didn't know . Keeping several huge spreadsheets, one for portfolio, one for dividends, one for transactions


----------



## olivaw (Nov 21, 2010)

I maintain a spreadsheet but I’ll continue to use Globe Investor to help keep track of my portfolio as long as it works.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

.

i for one cannot even begin to imagine keying in one's entire wealth to an anonymous 3rd party website. Never mind the chances of hacking, the chances of their selling data - even generic data mined off their statistics - are far too high.

if in a foolish misguided moment my brain might think a 3rd party eyeing my invested assets would be a good idea, i know i could count on my fingers to rebel & block such a keying campaign.

i have a spreadsheet. Eclectic - cmf's resident guru of capital gains - once said that for certain companies with complicated histories, his spreadsheet is so elaborate that it's devolved into a full page per company.

eclectic is right imho. Some corporate reorgs, mergers, spinoffs are so complex that a column is insufficient to describe. In the end, such a spreadsheet becomes a ledger.

PS why would anyone spend any time tracking their dividends? the brokers supply annual statements of investment income along with their T5s for each account. I find these acceptable, no need for more. I've never noticed a broker's dividend or interest record to be wrong.

on the other hand, on the new capital gains national data base which is in process of being built - the brokers collaborating with the new IIROC regulations as charged by the minister of finance - there are massive errors in broker data which i am challenging. All the more reason to learn how to set up & maintain an Eclectic-style spreadsheet w full details.

.


----------



## milhouse (Nov 16, 2016)

Thanks for the heads up. 
I've played around with the Portfolio functionality and entered some data but I mainly just use my own spreadsheet to track data. I primarily use the portfolio function just for easy visibility of the stocks/funds I hold or am interested in.


----------



## john.cray (Dec 7, 2016)

humble_pie said:


> .
> 
> i for one cannot even begin to imagine keying in one's entire wealth to an anonymous 3rd party website. Never mind the chances of hacking, the chances of their selling data - even generic data mined off their statistics - are far too high.
> 
> ...




I've been thinking about the privacy aspects and data sensitivity too. I am totally against those sites where you have to enter your brokerage credentials, but what if you were to use a site where you never enter your personal details? In other words you manually enter all the positions/transactions/etc but the portfolio is in no way associated with you. It's just anonymous. Like this forum.

I think I might be more willing to use that kind of approach but what about you/others?

Cheers,
JC


----------



## latebuyer (Nov 15, 2015)

I just like to see how my etfs are doing everyday. I don't care if google knows what etfs i hold. It is a bad habit to check everyday and maybe this will make me stop looking.


----------



## humble_pie (Jun 7, 2009)

john.cray said:


> I've been thinking about the privacy aspects and data sensitivity too. I am totally against those sites where you have to enter your brokerage credentials, but what if you were to use a site where you never enter your personal details? In other words you manually enter all the positions/transactions/etc but the portfolio is in no way associated with you. It's just anonymous. Like this forum.
> 
> I think I might be more willing to use that kind of approach but what about you/others?




the mere concern for the metadata is enough to keep me far away. The portfolio host knows the IP addy of the data entrant, also the full extent of the portfolio's value across all financial institutions. At a minimum, any host can aggregate districts by IP addy & sell the data. Any personal details provided - broker, date of birth, marital status, pension ID - only add to the value of the data that can be mined.

.


----------



## peterk (May 16, 2010)

Well frig. Now what am I going to do? I mean I already keep an ACB spreadsheet for my unregistered account, but that's it. I'll have no way to check my whole portfolio in one place at a glance, from any computer (work and home)...Is this a permanent removal you think? why would they do this!?!


----------



## milhouse (Nov 16, 2016)

Rob Carrick of the G&M just wrote a round up of replacement options. It's behind a paywall tho. Quick list:
Globeinvestor
Morningstar Canada
Sharesight
TMX Money
Wealthica
Yahooo Finance
MarketWatch
MSN Money


----------



## larry81 (Nov 22, 2010)

I cannot recommend www.portfolioslicer.com enough !


----------



## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

Yahoo Finance is good. 

For backtesting and other models, check out:
https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/


----------



## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

Google Finance is dead to me. The new interface is really, really bad. I predict they'll lose 98% of their traffic. Maybe they don't care, but who knows, maybe there will be some backlash.


----------



## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

I suspect they have so much coin they don't give a....


----------



## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

You are probably correct but I still highjacked the 'Report a Problem' link at the bottom of the Finance page to plead for them to retain the 'classic' version.


----------



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

larry81 said:


> I cannot recommend www.portfolioslicer.com enough !


This

Created by probably the top excel jedi master in the country!

I've tried Google finance, Wealthica, Quicken and portfolioslicer is the most in depth and powerful portfolio tracker











I used to maintain web portfolios on Google finance but I've neglected them in favour of portfolioslicer. I still use Google for the charts and news

The old Google finance charts required Adobe Flash, while the internet has moved on to HTML5 eons ago. Safari and Google Chrome both block Adobe flash by default.. you had to enable flash plugin manually on Google Chrome to display the old Google finance charts..

Just like every website that gets revamped, you'll forget there was an old version after a few days..


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Is it just me or has Google Finance completely changed in the last couple days?

finance.google.com used to show me a nice summary page with market indices (including world) and currencies. It was a great single page for summarizing everything. Now it's just a listing of stories and a few market quotes, but nothing as comprehensive of what it used to be. I also can no longer type in currency tickers like USDCAD to get a real time quote. It's really too bad they redesigned this.

World market quotes are still under a separate link but I really preferred the old design.


----------



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Yea there's been a lot of traffic about google finance on other sites the past few days

I moved away from it when they announced abandoning it years ago


----------



## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

james4beach said:


> Is it just me or has Google Finance completely changed in the last couple days?...
> .


Yes, changed. Total crap now. I wish they would keep the propellerheads in their cages. If it ain't broke leave it alone!


----------



## john.cray (Dec 7, 2016)

I second that. New site is total ****. Started looking at marketwatch.com for watchlist/news.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

OnlyMyOpinion said:


> Yes, changed. Total crap now. I wish they would keep the propellerheads in their cages. If it ain't broke leave it alone!


Yeah, it's bad. I don't know why Google changes things that are working just fine. I've had a pretty low opinion of Google in the last few years... it's been a while since they innovated and made something better. They also just did a horrible redesign of Google Calendar.

Yahoo Finance is bloated but is still a great resource. Excellent data too, including historical stock prices with adjustments for splits.


----------



## gardner (Feb 13, 2014)

I find the quality of the data on Yahoo better -- for example they have intraday USDCAD=X, where I get spot rates from when I need to note ACBs in $US and so forth. I always found the Yahoo U/I more annoying for stocks than the Google one, but now that Google has broken finance so badly, I am back to Yahoo, I guess. I've given numerous "send feedback" complaints. Maybe they will see sense.

I believe one of the driving factors for Google is to get rid of Flash, but the new HTML5 charts are much, much, much worse and even worse than the bitmap charts you'd get on a non-flash platform.


----------



## londoncalling (Sep 17, 2011)

What I miss from google finance is listing the div payouts on the charts. I use TMX money for price history and financial post for debenture info. Seems that retail investors are being hit with the cost of screening research tools these days. I guess we could always use SEDAR and do it the old fashion way with pen and paper. Also considered getting my quotes from the daily newspaper circa 1983.

Cheers


----------



## OnlyMyOpinion (Sep 1, 2013)

Morningstar has a lot of info as well.


----------



## gardner (Feb 13, 2014)

londoncalling said:


> div payouts on the charts


These are shown on the Yahoo charts.

The main downside with Yahoo is the degree of invasive advertising that I find awkward to block.


----------



## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

Have you tried AdBlock extension on your browser? Just opened Yahoo finance and it's blocking a dozen or so ads per page.

Roughly same count on CMF


----------



## Tawcan (Aug 3, 2012)

For my portfolio spreadsheet, I used to pull dividend info from Google Finance. With the recent changes, I no longer can do that. Now I have to pull that info from Yahoo Finance. 

In case you're interested in using Google Spreadsheets to track your portfolio, take a look at this.
https://www.tawcan.com/step-step-guide-make-google-spreadsheet-dividend-portfolio-template/


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

^ Oh no, you just reminded me that I also was pulling data out of Google Finance. Grrrrr I'm going to have to rewrite a bunch of software.


----------



## doctrine (Sep 30, 2011)

You can still pull much data out of Google Finance, although yes it looks like dividend data is gone.


----------



## james4beach (Nov 15, 2012)

Tawcan said:


> For my portfolio spreadsheet, I used to pull dividend info from Google Finance. With the recent changes, I no longer can do that. Now I have to pull that info from Yahoo Finance.
> 
> In case you're interested in using Google Spreadsheets to track your portfolio, take a look at this.
> https://www.tawcan.com/step-step-guide-make-google-spreadsheet-dividend-portfolio-template/


Hi Tawcan, I'm assuming you wrote the guide. Great stuff, thanks for publishing and sharing!


----------



## dave2012 (Feb 17, 2012)

I have been getting all my stock data scrapping Google Finance every few minutes and really liked the old Google portfolio feature to get an overview of what was happening each day. Anyways I just rewrote my code yesterday to use marketwatch.com instead to get pricing and price change. Scrapping code is easier as well. My program automatically saves portfolio values and daily stock prices now so I'll use my own system to keep an eye on things and soon to produce charts. Still getting use to the new Google Finance. Does have some nice features and finally its mobile device friendly!


----------



## Tawcan (Aug 3, 2012)

james4beach said:


> Hi Tawcan, I'm assuming you wrote the guide. Great stuff, thanks for publishing and sharing!


Thanks, it was originally published in 2016 but I just updated the article yesterday to pull data from Yahoo Finance instead.


----------



## peterk (May 16, 2010)

Well, google portfolio is finally gone.

The new interface is impressively bad. Completely useless. I have no idea what they were thinking.


----------



## gardner (Feb 13, 2014)

james4beach said:


> Grrrrr I'm going to have to rewrite a bunch of software.


I recoded all my HTML scraping against TMX Money -- https://web.tmxmoney.com/quote.php?qm_symbol=$sym -- a few weeks back. It's just perl hacks for me, so no really big deal.


----------

