January 04, 2004

Web Wise: Go online for a new year review

AT the start of a new year, many investors like to dust off their portfolios and give them a thorough review, writes Matthew Wall.
Traditionally, wealthy savers did this with their stockbroker, but today you can go online and browse any number of investment websites, from share tipsheets to portfolio managers, looking for information and advice.

For example, Citywires Recipes for Wealth tool (www.citywire.co.uk) assesses what category of investor you are, such as cautious or adventurous, and then suggests how much of your portfolio should go into different assets. If your portfolio does not match the model, Citywire recommends funds based on its analysis of managers records. The site deserves four stars.

Another feature-packed site is MoneyAM (www.moneyam.co.uk). It is neatly designed with the active trader in mind. Free services include live share prices, company news and financial data, plus access to an investor bulletin board. It gets three stars.

If you want to find out what press commentators and brokers have been saying about the companies in your portfolio, Digital Look (www.digitallook.com) provides a useful collection of resources. Just key in the companys name or stock-market code and you can read recent newspaper articles, four years of financial data, broker recommendations and even investor comment from bulletin boards. Digital Look gets three stars.

I revisited ADVFN.com, a website I once recommended, but was disappointed. It makes the cardinal error of massing far too much information on the home page and distracting users with flashing banner ads. This site is only for die-hard fans who are immune to design disasters. It gets one star.