Here's What a Watchlist Can Do For You

The holidays are a great time to review your investing progress, reassess your goals and create new ones. As a "gift" to yourself, why not make a list of stocks to watch for the new year? It can be an opportunity to enhance your research skills, learn about different companies and, potentially, find new investments for your portfolio.

Watchlists are an efficient way to keep an eye on stocks, exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and/or mutual funds you've already invested in, and those you want to learn more about. They can be a simple way to follow a company's stock performance, financial results, news releases, media mentions and analyst ratings, all in one convenient location.

Creating Your Custom Watchlist

With securities information publicly available online, we can get up-to-the-minute information throughout the trading day. Here are a few places to consider setting up your customized watchlist:

Your trading platform. This is a convenient option because your trading account, holdings, trading history and watchlist can all be in one place.

At RBC Direct Investing, for example, View & Manage Watchlists under My Portfolio allows you to create new watchlists and edit existing ones.

You'll also find your watchlists under the Place an Order tab...

...and through a Detailed Quote.

Business media websites. Many major media outlets offer watchlist capabilities, with varying degrees of detail. Some are free, while others cost money or require you to buy a subscription. Some paid sites offer free watchlists, up to a certain number of stocks.

Stand-alone apps. Investors can also download independent mobile apps to create watchlists.

Who Should Be on Your Watchlist?

This is where the fun begins. It may be wise to start with a focused list of companies that you can reasonably review on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Adding hundreds of stocks may seem like a good idea, until you realize the amount of time it will take to review all that information. There are a number of ways to organize watchlists — all dependent on your personal portfolio needs. Here are a few common approaches:

Sector or industry. Creating watchlists based on specific sectors can help you keep an eye on how certain industry players are doing, or help you familiarize yourself with industries you want to learn more about.

Geography. You may be considering global investment ideas, in which case you can create a list or lists of global stocks of interest.

Investments of Interest. You may be hearing certain names out there and are considering them as possible investments, but want to follow them for a while. A watchlist of potential opportunities can give you a better sense of whether they'll be right for you.

Benefits of a Watchlist

Placing a stock on your watchlist gives you easy access to a huge amount of material about a company or investment that would otherwise take time to find. Depending on the investment type, you'll get access to quote information, including prices, volume, 52-week high and low details, and fundamentals like P/E ratio. You can also dig further into detailed quotes for analyst research and latest news related to companies.

Watchlists can also add discipline to your investing habits. They let you to stay in the know about a company, and a regular flow of information can help you make better-informed decisions.

As 2018 comes to a close, setting up a custom watchlist can be a simple, risk-free and effective (plus fun!) way to kick-start your investing habits for the year ahead.