New Feature #2: Portfolio123 Live Portfolio

Despite the “Your One Stop VIX-Centric View of the Universe…” tagline, I hope it will come as no surprise to anyone that I have an investing life outside of the VIX. Frankly, I am of the opinion that where the markets are concerned, it is important to utilize a broad-brush approach, if not a multidisciplinary perspective, as is advocated so eloquently by Michael Mauboussin of Legg Mason Capital Management.

Instead of jumping right in and philosophizing about some broader market subjects, I thought I would set up a real-time example and use that opportunity to shine a little light on Portfolio123. My relationship to Portfolio123 is this: after paying a lifetime membership to Silicon Investor in 1998, it wasn’t until 2004 that I ponied up another subscription fee, this time for Portfolio123.com. I have been a satisfied customer ever since. (For those who may be interested in kicking Portfolio123’s tires a little – and I recommend that you do – Harry Domash reviewed Portfolio123 in 2004 when it was still in beta and again later that year when some additional features and pricing had been rolled out. You can get a good current overview of P123 from their site and dive into the product tours if you want more comprehensive information. Also, Brian at Trade4Cash is one blogger who is already using P123 technology as the engine for some of his trading systems development and presentation.)

Today I am rolling out a live portfolio which I have just developed at P123 and will briefly update and also use as a thought starter of sorts each weekend. The stock selection portion of the portfolio shares some common ancestry with P123’s stalwart Balanced4 stock ranking system. I will provide additional details about the mechanics of this portfolio and system in subsequent weeks. For now, suffice it to say that this is a five stock portfolio that is rebalanced each weekend; the stocks selected below for initial purchases are required to be priced at $10.00 or more at the time of purchase, trade an average of 300,000 shares per day, and have a minimum market capitalization of $250 million.