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You are here: Home / How To / A Powerful Tool to Create Your Stock Watchlist

A Powerful Tool to Create Your Stock Watchlist

Whether you’re training for a marathon or going on an adventure trip, being ready can make a world of difference.

The same is true for the stock market. It’s important to be prepared with a watchlist of fundamentally sound stocks ready to go at right prices.

Whether the market is in rally mode or in a correction, being prepared with a watchlist is key.

Here is a video I’ve prepared to help you learn a simple yet powerful tool of creating your own stock watchlist, which is dynamic and tells you in a snap the status of stocks you are watching.


If you can’t see the video above, click here to see.

Let me know your thoughts on the video, and also share any other way(s) you maintain your own stock watchlist.

Resources:
1. Sample Stock Watchlist
2. Google Spreadsheets Help Center

P.S. This post was originally published in Dec. 2013, and has been republished following a lot of reader questions on this topic.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sanjeev Bhatia says

    December 18, 2013 at 8:12 am

    Superb, simply awesome.

    You have saved so many man hours of work with these simple applications. Thanks a tonne.

    Happy Investing 🙂

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:25 pm

      Thanks Sanjeev! Glad you found this valuable.

      Reply
  2. Sanjeev Bhatia says

    December 18, 2013 at 9:27 am

    One query:

    Is their any way to directly export the list of stocks from google screener to spreadsheet?

    Happy Investing

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:48 am

      Sanjeev, you can export the Google spreadsheet this way – Select File > Download as and select a file type (like excel or pdf). Then select Open or Save.

      Reply
      • Sanjeev Bhatia says

        December 18, 2013 at 3:16 pm

        Actually I was asking about screener results being exported, not the spreadsheet 🙁

        Reply
        • Vishal Khandelwal says

          December 18, 2013 at 10:23 pm

          You can export the results into a Spreadsheet. What I do is copy the relevant data and paste in the Excel sheet I maintain.

          Reply
  3. Nitin says

    December 18, 2013 at 11:16 am

    Good Stuff. I knew one could create something like this, but never tried. You made it sound so easy. Thanks again!

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 11:43 am

      Thanks Nitin!

      Reply
  4. Rajaram S says

    December 18, 2013 at 11:38 am

    Thank you, Vishal! Although I maintain a screener, there are 2 things I learnt from this. One is to be very strict about what gets into the screener (only those within one’s circle of competency, or chosen with some rational method). And second is I have added the 52wk low/high to the screener to get a feel for where the stock stands relative to its recent prices. It would be even better if there were a 3 year low/high (for cigar butt stocks), but not sure where to find it.

    Regards,
    Rajaram

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 12:13 pm

      Indeed Rajaram…knowing the boundaries of your circle and then staying within it is very important while creating your watchlist.

      As for your point on 3-year lows and higs, you can open the Google’s 3/5 year price chart for the stock and drag the mouse to the visibly highest and lowest levels to find the numbers and then enter them in the spreadsheet manually.

      By the way, in the Sample Watchlist I have shared at the end of the post, I have added a column showing the 1-year charts of all companies in the watchlist. You can edit the header to see the 2-year charts. Regards.

      Reply
  5. shyam jos says

    December 18, 2013 at 12:26 pm

    very useful and pretty easy to create , thanks for sharing

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:24 pm

      Thanks for your feedback, Shyam!

      Reply
  6. Upendra says

    December 18, 2013 at 6:58 pm

    Unlike other portfolio trackers offered by financial websites, blogs, this way of creating a stock watchlist seems different in style, which can be more customized. Excellent..!!

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:22 pm

      Indeed Upendra. Thanks for your comment!

      Reply
  7. Deepak says

    December 18, 2013 at 7:10 pm

    Vishal,

    Superb work.
    But one question. Y not use the watchlist provided by screener.in or moneycontrol. In moneycontrol u can also enter ur price to buy and find out whether it is trading higher than ur price or not ?

    – Deepak

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:21 pm

      Thanks Deepak! Yeah, Screener is also an option. I showcased Google as I liked the simplicity of the tool. Regards.

      Reply
  8. Ash says

    December 18, 2013 at 7:53 pm

    I use Stocks in my iPhone. I’ve a mental watchlist as well.

    I feel that this Google thing is a lot of hassle. Why not use Screener.in? It has a watchlist, does all the calculation itself, plus has other nice tools. My math disability was never an issue to do calculate key ratios to aid in decision.

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:20 pm

      I find Google a handy tool. Screener is also a nice option though.

      Reply
  9. Shyam says

    December 18, 2013 at 9:21 pm

    You have indicated 30% mos but multiplying the iv by 0.6. Pls change it to 0.7. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:19 pm

      Yeah, it was a mistake that I have already corrected in the sheet. Thanks!

      Reply
  10. Prasanna says

    December 18, 2013 at 10:49 pm

    I had prepared this kind of auto updating spreadsheet screener, but using more complex excel macro stuff. And also that was difficult to make changes and maintain. So i had abandoned that. This one is pretty easy. Thanks Vishal for sharing this.

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 18, 2013 at 10:58 pm

      Thanks for your feedback, Prasanna!

      Reply
  11. Bharat says

    December 19, 2013 at 1:54 am

    Awesome! WIll definitely be using this! 🙂 Thanks a lot

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 19, 2013 at 10:29 am

      Thanks Bharat! All the best!

      Reply
  12. Jay Shah says

    December 19, 2013 at 8:47 pm

    Dear Vishal,

    Thank you very much for your post , this was very helpful.

    I spend lot of time to figure out the way to find historical PEs but was not able to, is there any way to do this with Google Spreadsheet. This is the information which might be very useful , could do similar analysis that Professor Bakshi did in his October Fest 13 where he discusses the importance of buying quality.

    Also is there any other way to get this information on historical PE ratios for last 10 years for free.I am stugling to get this kind of information from last 3 weeks but could not.

    Reply
  13. Keshav says

    December 20, 2013 at 2:46 pm

    Great work Vishal. Just wanted to know about how did you find Google finance tags to be used. The strings like pe etc. Can you tell me how to get that info ?

    Reply
    • Keshav says

      December 22, 2013 at 11:52 pm

      I got my answer…thanks..It is there in one of the link.

      Reply
  14. ramesh says

    December 21, 2013 at 1:33 pm

    Thanks for this useful info

    Reply
  15. jinesh says

    December 21, 2013 at 2:19 pm

    Hi. Sometimes the stock price falls because of bonus issues. How can we account for that in the chart itself? (visually)
    One workaround I can think of is to make chart of daily market cap instead of daily stock price. Is this right way?

    Reply
  16. Georg says

    December 21, 2013 at 10:05 pm

    Thank you for sharing this great piece of advice. This will be of tremendous help. Greetings from Switzerland!

    Reply
  17. Mohamed Fasil says

    December 21, 2013 at 10:47 pm

    I have a watchlist set in HDFC Securities portal and based on 52 weeks low/high I will get a email alert. Creating watch list with Google Sheet is pretty good option as its simple and free.

    One more improvement to this sheet would make this a great tool, getting email alerts on for 52 week low/high so that we can act quickly. Is there any option to set the email alerts ?

    Reply
  18. Amit Goyal says

    December 22, 2013 at 1:07 pm

    Hi Vishal,

    Thanks for this very useful information. I just have one small question. Are these Data points from Google finance based on “consolidated financials” or “standalone financials” specially the P/E ratios etc. I find calculated data points based on “consolidated financials” as more accurate and logical as data points based on “standalone financials” can be very misleading in many cases. Also are these ratios like P/E etc. from Google Finance based on last full financial year’s performance OR the last latest 12 months performance.

    For example P/E ratios on Moneycontrol are calculated using last twelve months standalone financial in many cases which is very frustrating and misleading as I have to again recalculate everything myself.

    Thanks and Regards,

    Amit Goyal.

    Reply
  19. Praveen says

    December 24, 2013 at 4:34 am

    This is Brilliant and extremely useful. Thanks a million!

    Reply
    • Vishal Khandelwal says

      December 24, 2013 at 1:55 pm

      Thanks Praveen!

      Reply
  20. Puneet says

    December 30, 2013 at 3:51 pm

    Hi Vishal,

    I use Google finance website to create a watchlist-it also get refreshed automatically when i open it-(downside is it may not have some of custom columns which you have created-or i am not sure if it may allow to create some columns on the website itself)

    additionally if any of the stock which i have bought it let me enter the buy amount etc so that it can track my profits or losses as well.

    so if i am most of the things on google finance website – i may not need excel(also- i can completely understand love for excel).

    one thing i am still to figure out- i want to capture screenshots of prices at some particular dates- so which means if i am watching a stock from an year and i reviewed it around 4 times- it should be captured in the list automatically so that i can learn from my mistakes- this stock was at this price in feb and this was the pe ratio- why the hell i did not buy it? what was i thinking ?-so i go to comments of that quarter and see it)

    because this price is going to be dynamic so the price will get auto-refreshed and will show me the current price not a price of a particular day which i wanted to capture just for my analysis.

    Thank you so much for putting the efforts in creating and sharing this video.

    Reply
  21. Kumar says

    January 11, 2014 at 10:49 pm

    Vishal San, What are the GoogleFinance attributes for finding Debt, Debt-to-Equity ration, various Cashflow financials etc.?

    Reply
  22. monik gandhi says

    June 2, 2016 at 4:40 pm

    thnx Vishal Sir for sharing this. I use screener.in which many of you here might already know. When you login into the site you get all the recent announcements on your watchlist on the homescreen. You also get email alerts regarding stocks in your watchlist.

    Reply
  23. Prakash says

    July 3, 2016 at 7:33 am

    Dear Sir,
    Good work. My query is on Stop/Lock profit tools. On purchase, people for some days keep track and once it enters into profit they do not track them with a hope to maximise further profits. And they repent later of not booking gains. In this case, Stop profit tool is of use to lock into the profit. Say, if one wants lock profits from a 10% fall from the recent high (not 52 week high), the tool shall alert the investor to lock into the profit. If this kind of tool is available, it will help the investors to take a call to lock into profits. This will help in sailing into profits and helps into lock the gains. I request you to consider this stop profit tool also to help on sell side which investors are lacking and very much required. Many thanks.

    Reply
  24. Mayank says

    July 14, 2016 at 8:00 pm

    Hi Vishal,

    This is simplicity at its best! You don’t know how many hours you have saved by just sharing this super tool.

    Can we also do the same for Mutual Funds as well? Tried doing it but it did not work, not sure why though.

    Reply
  25. Kedar says

    April 3, 2017 at 11:08 pm

    Hi Sir,

    This is really useful. How does one carry out analysis of the stock he wants to – other than the ones mentioned in the sheet)? So if I want to analyze Sun Pharma, how should I do that using the Google Sheet? Also how does one identify his circle of competence ? Also what is the formula applied to calculate Intrinsic Value ?

    Regards,
    Kedar Lele

    Reply
  26. Jitesh Paliwal says

    September 22, 2017 at 3:13 pm

    Very useful spreadsheet. Gr8 work and sharing with others!!

    Reply
  27. Sunil says

    October 3, 2018 at 10:49 pm

    Fantastic !! loved the idea very simple yet effective.

    Reply
  28. Suprio Bose says

    April 9, 2019 at 11:31 pm

    Sir, this is a very useful tools for freshers such as myself. Just one question, does the google stock watchlist tool work for NSE as well? I tried using the NSE scrip codes. the prices were getting updated, but the pe and the 52 week high number is different from what is mentioned in NSE. Thanks.

    Reply
  29. SJ says

    June 7, 2020 at 1:22 pm

    Thanks a lot. This is quite helpful.

    Reply

Trackbacks

  1. How to Lose Big Money in 2014 | Safal Niveshak says:
    January 5, 2014 at 3:25 pm

    […] to have determined in advance exactly what companies you are interested in owning (by creating a watchlist of quality stocks) and exactly what price would get your […]

    Reply

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