Two Android Apps for your Stock Trading

Monitor your stock watchlist on the go!

I am a big fan of Android phone, and I have tried so many apps to help monitoring my stock watchlist. What I want to share with you here are the two best apps you should download and try.

#1. Ministock

Even though this app doesn't have more-than-four stars it deserves, this has been my favorite stock app. I just love it. The widget is so useful to monitor my watchlist. Below screenshot is what I have on my Nexus 4 phone. As I am now focusing in emerging market, like Indonesia market (I stay in South East Asia anyway), most of my watchlist are Indonesian stocks.

Download the app thru Play Store.

#2. Calendar App - aCalendar

If you remember in my previous post on Stock Tracking Spreadsheet Template, I mentioned about the importance of tracking your trading history. I do this by writing all my trades done in a calendar. I made a separate calendar in Google apart from my personal calendar. This new calendar is strictly for my trading history. And I need a widget that can show me all my trading history distinctly.

Luckily, I find this app - aCalendar. The calendar widget allows you to have monthly view with every entry of the day. Also, it allows you to use different colors for different types of trading activities. I use yellow for BUY, GREEN for SELL at profit and RED for SELL at loss. I update my mutual funds top-up here too. Simple and really useful. This this!

Get aCalendar via Google Play Store

What android apps do you use? Share in the comment below!

Business Plan Template for Your Stock Trading

Before you jump directly to stock market and start buying stocks, you need to have a proper business plan. Stock investing/trading is just like any other business, you can't expect yourself to right away buy stocks and earn profit. Plan properly!

"If you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

This business plan template is what I used after adapting to so many books I read. I save this trading plan in my Evernote, so when there is time to spare while waiting for a bus or waiting for food, I would read this business plan just to refresh about what are the rules I set up when I started this business.

So, if you do not have a WRITTEN Business Plan, then this is a good time to get a paper and start jotting down. The following outline is a simple example and of course you can always tweak it. This list works for me and hopefully will also work for you.

1. MISSION
• What is you trading missing statement?
• What is your real motivation behind your trading?
• Is it for your children education? or for passive income for you retirement?
2. GOALS and OBJECTIVES
• What are your trading goals and objectives?
3. RULES
• What are your trading rules you need to stick on. This may be difficult to define, but with more experience, you will get it. Read more books about real, successful traders.
4. STRATEGY (METHOD)
• What are trading tools do you use?
• What are trading software do you used?
• How you screen stocks in stock market?
• How do you use fundamental analysis to pick stocks?
• How do you enter/exit market?
• What Technical analysis (indicators) do you use?
5. POSITION SIZING (MONEY)
• How many lot you SHOULD buy per trade?
• This is important aspect of trading
6. PSYCHOLOGY (MIND)
• What are your physiological environment in trading?
• What are emotional challenges do you have?
7. TRADING ROUTINES
• What are you daily/weekly/monthly routines?
• Do you keep trading journal?
8. MISTAKES
• What are your mistakes?
• How does it affect your overall trading?
• Do you record down every mistake?
• How to prevent it from happening again?

Ok, I am very sure you want to see an example, so here you go. Please note that this is just an example. This is not (fully) my trading plan, I adapted this example to better illustrate the business plan template.

1. MISSION
• To trade well and right!
• To be able to have different source of income
• To act as passive income for my retirement!
2. GOALS and OBJECTIVES
• To improve my EDGE
• To make ZERO mistakes
• To improve my automation of trading journal 
3. RULES
• I am not a value investor
• I do not apply Dollar Cost Averaging
• I must follow my system, not following means a mistake
• I do not hold stocks more that 3 months
• ... (the list goes on)
4. STRATEGY (METHOD)
• I use Yahoo Finance to get a stock quote
• I use Amibroker/Metatrader/NexusChart for my technical analysis
• I use Microsoft Excel for my trading performance monitoring
• ... (list down all you stock trading software)
• Stock screener is done by ... (my Online Stock Screener)
• The screening is based fundamental analysis (earnings, ROE, P/E, etc)
• My watchlist consist of (stock A, stock B, etc)
• My entry strategy is based on (Support resistance, Fibo, EMA, etc)
• My exit strategy is based on (Support resistance, Fibo, EMA, etc)
• My cut loss is at 8%
5. POSITION SIZING (MONEY)
• Every time I buy stocks, maximum I can buy is xxx shares.
• Many different way to calculate (learn Position Sizing here)
6. PSYCHOLOGY (MIND)
• I buy stocks with random expectation 
• Everything happens in stock market is RANDOM
• I believe in "Five Fundamental Truth" about trading
• ... etc
7. TRADING ROUTINES
• Download EOD everyday
• Update my trading journal (start creating Stock Tracking Spreadsheet)
• Read financial reports
• Read news
8. MISTAKES
• Write down all my mistakes (not following the above business plan)

Try to come up with your own business plan based on this simple business plan template and share it with me!

Stock Tracking Spreadsheet Template

"Show me a trader with a good trading records, and I'll show you a good trader" (dr Alexander Elder)

Earlier this year I read up quite a number of trading books. I came across Alexander Elder's Sell and Sell Short which in my opinion is a really good trading book. Like most well-known trading book, Sell and Sell Short elaborates the importance of the 3M (Mind, Method, Money). However, dr Elder went on to emphasize the essence of Trading Diary, or I call it Trading Journal. Some people refer it as Investment Tracker Spreadsheet, Tracking Spreadsheet or Stock Tracking Spreadsheet Template. They all mean the same.

The idea of having this is clear. You will have to monitor you progress in stock trading. Have you been making money or wasting time and money? So if you are trading stocks now and do not have any tools to track the performance (papers, excel templates, online service portfolio, etc), you better make one! Most stock trading software or even your broker account will have this sort of monitoring platforms. However, these may not meet your needs.

Here I am sharing my simple template which is fairly sufficient for my daily monitoring of my stocks. Please note that this template is only for educational purpose, so please use it for your own (do not sell it!). I do not protect the file with password and you are free to tweak it as you wish. What you need could be more than what the template can provide.

The link to download the file is here. While the simple instruction is below. As I am now quite actively trading in emerging markets, I am using Indonesia stocks for examples (all numbers used are dummy numbers - not my trading performance).

First tab - Stock Tracking

Second Tab - Summary

1. There are two tabs: Stock Tracking and Summary. Stock Tracking is where you key in manually every trades (Buy, Sell, Dividend) you make. Summary is to see per-ticker performance. 
2. For those highlighted in YELLOW, you have to fill up manually, while those not highlighted are already containing formula.
3. Ok, first tab. First fill you what is you initial investment you make at the start of the year (eg. IDR 50,000,000 - see cell D5). Also, type what's the commission percentages for Buy and Sell (cells D6 and D7).
4. Then fill up the table (make use "TAB" to move the cursor the the right).
• Stocks - what stocks you buy/sell
• Position - are you buying or selling. Or are you getting dividend (if dividend, please fill up the rest manually)
• Date Buy/Sell - dates of transactions
• Price per share
• Quantity of shares 
5. Ok, second tab. Fill up what are the unique stocks you have from tab Stock Tracking. This tab is to summarize the stock performance. For "Current Price", please fill up today price (you can get it from Yahoo Finance).
6. Also, here, there is formula to see how much is the percentage of your profit over your initial investment.

This is a simple stock tracking spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel. This works for me and sufficient enough to meet my needs. Feel free to tweak this or even make a new one based on the concept and share with me.

Hope this investment tracking is beneficial for everyone.