Investing: Constructing Virtual Portfolios

Every reader of this blog knows, the Internet has a lot of advantages. One of these gains: Investing is much easier and cheaper. For example, many financial websites allow you to construct a virtual stock portfolio.

One of the pioneers is Yahoo. If you go on http://finance.yahoo.com/ and search for example on Starbucks (Nasdaq: SBUX), the site shows you not just the current stock price and the latest news about the company. Yahoo also offers you the possibility to add this stock to a (virtual) portfolio. It needs just 1 click on the line "Add to Portfolio". You enter then a site which offers you some alternatives, namely existing portfolios or a new one. If you choose the new portfolio you can name it, for example "Consumer Stocks". Later you can add any stock which is traded in the USA, for example "Urban Outfitters" (Nasdaq: URBN) or "Wal-Mart Stores" (Nyse: WMT). The "Consumer Stocks" portfolio, which you find on  the line "My Portfolios"on Yahoo Finance, shows you then the stockprices and current news of all stocks in the portfolio.

You can add more information, for example, a (ficticious) number of stocks in your portfolio. The portfolio calculates than the current (fictional) value of this virtual portfolio and also the difference to the last trading day in $ and in percent.

Other providers, of course, allow you also to construct fictional portfolios, for example Google (http://www.google.com/finance). The portfolios cost just the time to construct and to revisit them, no money at all. They are a very cheap & comfortable possibility to learn about investing and to get a feeling for the stock market. If the stock market falls, it can just bother your ego. You don´t lose a penny. And regarding the low costs, you can construct many portfolios with Yahoo, Google and other providers and compare them, to find which portfolio is the best for your purpose.