I don't often review software on this website, I normally just pop something on the Resources Page, but this time I do want to share a piece of software that I've been using because I truly find it incredibly helpful when it comes to investing. I've been using Snowball Analytics for probably close on a year, I'm a paid subscriber, and it's been worth every cent - trust me. As much as I love Google Sheets for managing my portfolios, and I still do, Snowball Analytics has been a game changer. See, it's not only about showing my portfolios is a beautiful and organised way, it's all the other insights and tools that come with the software. When I put this all together, it's priceless. So, I want to walk through the software with you today and expose you to something that I truly believe is worth having in your toolbox.
In short, you open an account, and link your Brokerage account (or upload a statement - they support over 200 brokerages). Snowball will then import all your investments and start its magic. There's so much to say about this software, so instead, let me share a screenshot of what you see once you've connected your Brokerage account. I've put it in stealth mode as I don't feel comfortable sharing my actual monetary values, but everything else you see is one of my portfolios:
From this, you'll notice a number of awesome features:
From this Dashboard, you truly get a quick overview of how everything in your portfolio is going. But, this is honestly just the surface. If you look further at the screenshot, you'll note the menu, which has the following:
As you can see, this software is absolutely packed with awesome information and insights about your portfolio/s. I want to break each section down a bit, as I think that will truly give you a good look inside.
The Analytics section allows you to explore your portfolio in more depth. It's further broken down into Common, Dividends, Growth, Metrics and Reporting. Each of these containing a huge amount of invaluable and interesting information. Common simply shows you a list of all your assets along with things such as cost per share, cost basis, current value, dividends, P&L, IRR and share of portfolio. Dividends goes deeper into your dividends, which stocks are bringing you dividends, what the yield is and has been, and what the growth is looking like, beautifully displayed with graphs. Growth shows you your portfolio growth over time, which you can benchmark against the S&P500, for example. Metrics go into more detail, exposing insights such as TWR, P/E, Volatility and risk metrics - this gives you an idea if you're being too risky and perhaps need to look at some adjustments. Finally, the Report tab gives you an in-depth look at all the accounting matters, such as profit from sales, taxes, commissions, turnover, deposits, withdrawals and so forth.
Next up is the Portfolio section. This section is large and there's a massive amount of information. You can view your whole portfolio's holdings and performance, as well as look at all your transactions. The transactions are really useful, I find myself looking at this to see when I made purchases or sales, what profit I made each time and so forth. Something great here is that you can actually edit transactions, so if something isn't correct, you have control. The dividend calendar speaks for itself, this gives you an idea of when you're receiving dividends - I love how it's represented on a calendar.
The My Goal section has been truly awesome. You input figures such as portfolio value, monthly contributions, inflation, tax, and it'll spit out a graph showing when you'll hit your goal, here's a screenshot as an example of mine:
The last section is called Reports, and this was recently added to the software. The Report is designed to give you more control and clarity over your investment insights.
This new feature allows you to:
Beyond tracking your total portfolio, the Report lets you drill down into performance by asset class, category, or individual investment. To customise your view, simply use the filter in the top-right corner of the Report section and choose the metrics you need.
Right, now let's look at the next section, Tools. There are 4 tools available to you here:
I haven't used the rebalancing tool much, to be honest, but the premise is that you can set up your categories such as information technology, consumables, etc. and Snowball assists you in sticking to these categories based on what percentage of each you want your portfolio to consist of. In other words, if it sees that your information technology category is getting too weighted, it'll make suggestions on how to rebalance this.
The Top dividend stocks section allows you to drill down to which stocks are paying the best dividends. You can pick your market, the country and the sector, and it'll show you. Here's an example:
Next up is the Dividend payout calculator, and as the name says, this section shows you when companies are paying their dividends. Like the section before, you can configure your interests and the calculator will show you the result:
Moving along, the next section is the Portfolio lab, and this is a fun one. The lab allows you to test your portfolio's allocations on historical data, compare with benchmarks, calculate dividend yields, diversification and more! This really isn't something that I can write about here, you really need to go in and look yourself, but it's really awesome to play with!
Last, but not least, the Find the Dip section. This section was created to assist you in finding out what various stocks you hold, might have dropped far enough to consider buying more. Comparisons are made against 10 day, 50 day, 100 day and 200 day moving averages, which gives you an idea, which might allow you to scoop up more of the shares at a discounted price.
Lastly, and one of my favourites, is the Community section! This section allows you to discover the most popular stocks and funds amongst other users on Snowball. You can see what other people are holding in their portfolios. I absolutely love seeing what stocks are popular amongst the users and spend a decent amount of time in this section of Snowball. On top of this, there are public portfolios, which you can actually explore in good deal and scoop up some ideas! One awesome feature with the public portfolios is that you can clone a portfolio 🙂
As you can see, this software is absolutely packed with incredible features and insights. It's been a game changer for me.
Over the above what I've shown above, there are a number of other features that I feel are worth mentioning, that I use extensively.
Depending on what account you have, you can have multiple portfolios. I've created 4 portfolios that span from different countries to cryptocurrencies. This allows me to separate things, but, there's an option to view the My Net Worth section, which combines all of your portfolios and gives you a complete overview of everything together.
Like most investing-type solutions, you can create watchlists. Apart from showing you the performance, I like the inclusion of recent and upcoming events (earnings, splits, dividends, etc.) as well as the news that is specific to these companies. Here's a screenshot:
Do you see what I mean? Awesome and easy way to manage some watchlists.
Snowball have both an iOS and Android application. The apps are great, and useful for a quick look, but I've found using the web version the best because using a big screen is easiest - might perhaps that's just me.
When it comes to the costs, there are 4 different options. You've got a Free account, a Starter, Investor and Expert. You can also choose to pay monthly or annually. Full disclosure, I'm a paying subscriber and I use the Investor tier. This works perfectly for me. I think most people will be happy on the Starter tier - The Free tier is fine to get started, but you really want the features that come with the paid tiers to truly benefit. So, that's $7.99 per month or $79.99 for a year. If you can afford the $14.99 per month for the Investor tier, that'll give you access to everything I've discussed in this blog post. I'd encourage you to go for the Investor tier.
If you click here, you can get started with a Free account. I think you'll find that you quickly move from the Free account to the Investor account, it only took me a month to do so, and I've never looked back.
All-in-all, this has become a tool in my toolkit, and I have absolutely nothing that's making me want to stop using it. I can truly see Snowball being in my life for many years to come.
