GalaTime Virtual Portfolios: Google Docs/Charts & Twitter
To follow up on my latest initiative - GalaTime Virtual Portfolios - let me explain how I intend to use some Web applications for portfolio management.
Obviously, we need each portfolio to be tracked - what positions are open, the mark-to-market profit or loss, the % return, etc. I will use Google Docs (Spreadsheets) for this purpose. The spreadsheet will be updated at the end of every market day to reflect the latest P&L. It will not be anything fancy - just a crisp summary of all trades.
However, given that we intend to share the logic behind each position, we need a place for detailed explanation. This will be done via individual blog posts for each trade and links to the same.
Keep checking the portfolio pages (after Jan 1, 2009) to see this in action; for example: Arjun Ashar’s 5L Portfolio
I needed a way to allow portfolio managers to post quick updates to their positions. But there is not a lot of news on all positions on any given day, so using a full-blown blogging platform would be overkill.
Well, thank God for Twitter.
Each PM will have a Twitter feed that will focus on short messages about their 5L positions. The Twitter feed is right next to the Google spreadsheet that shows the positions. All you have to do is keep checking the Virtual Portfolio page. Or subscribe to the Twitter feed for one or more Portfolio Managers.
If this sounds complex, trust me, it is not. Just give is a few days and once there’s a few positions in each portfolio and us PMs are Twittering away, things will look darn simple.
Google Charts API
Once there are a few positions in each portfolio and we’re a few weeks into this, I’ll create charts to compare risk & return metrics across all portfolios. It’ll also be interesting to see if the day-to-day volatility in each portfolio, how the annualized return varies over time as well as how much a single position impacts each portfolio.
Google Charts seems the best way for creation & display of such charts. Let me know if there’s better (light-weight) charting software that I can use instead.
Should be fun!
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