Communicator Help: My AOL Today for AOL<sup><font size=-3>®</font></sup> Communicator

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My AOL Today for AOL Communicator

Setting Up Your Portfolios

About Portfolios
Creating a Portfolio

About Portfolios

A Personal Finance Portfolio is a group of investments that you are tracking with the help of AOL. A single portfolio can include investments such as stocks, mutual funds, money markets, and cash, as well as information about those investments. You can include additional information such as the number of shares, purchase price per share, purchase date, and so on.

If you have already set up one or more portfolios, you already know that you can view them from my.aol.com, finance.aol.com, or AOL Keyword: My Portfolios.

My AOL TodayTicker displays the current value for the ticker symbols listed in your portfolios (unless you choose not to include stock quotes in the ticker contents).

My AOL Today displays more detailed information about each portfolio in the Portfolio area.

If you haven't yet set up any portfolios, you can do so from within My AOL Today. You can also edit existing portfolios.

Delayed Updates: Changes you make to your portfolios in My AOL Today are automatically reflected in the portfolio views available at finance.aol.com or AOL Keyword: My Portfolios for the same screen name.

However, subsequent changes you make at either of those locations will not be reflected in My AOL Today immediately. Changes made in those locations show up only after you attempt to customize some aspect of a portfolio from My AOL Today.

The screen name that My AOL Today uses to update your other portfolio views is stored under AOL Synchronization Settings in AOL Communicator Address Book.

Related topics:

Creating a Portfolio
Managing Your Portfolios

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Creating a Portfolio

Each portfolio you create can hold up to 100 items. You can create up to 20 portfolios per screen name.

To create a new portfolio for the Portfolio area in My AOL Today:

1. Click Customize (near the top-right corner of the My AOL Today screen.)

The Customize My AOL Today window opens to My AOL Content.

2. Click Customize Content.

The Customize My AOL Today window displays Customize News.

3. Choose Portfolio from the drop-down list at the top of the window.

The My Portfolios window opens, showing a list of your portfolios.

4. Click Create New (or Create New Portfolio, if you haven't previously set any up).

The Create Portfolio window opens.

5. Name the portfolio.

You can name the portfolio anything your wish as long as the name is no longer than 25 characters.

6. Add holdings to the portfolio.

Each line in the Create Portfolio window specifies the information for one stock, mutual fund, money market fund, or market index.
You must enter a ticker symbol in the first field. If you don't know the ticker symbol, click Symbol Lookup to look it up.
The remaining fields are optional. You can specify a number of shares, price, date of purchase, or commission.
You can also create a portfolio without any of these details if you like, just to track a cash value or market indices.
If you have more than six holdings to add, click Add More Symbols. You'll then see pane of rows where you can enter more symbols and related information. Click Next or Previous to move between panes within a portfolio.

7. Add cash to the portfolio.

This step is optional, but can be useful for tracking uninvested cash.
For example, if you had $500.00 from the sale of a particular stock and plan to invest this amount at a later date, it may be helpful to add this amount to your portfolio.
You can update this cash amount at any time, even if you leave it blank at first.

8. Click Save to confirm your data and return to My Portfolios.

Delayed Updates: Your new portfolio (including any further changes you make to it) is automatically reflected in the portfolio views available at finance.aol.com or AOL Keyword: My Portfolios for the same screen name.

However, subsequent changes you make at either of those locations will not be reflected in My AOL Today. Changes made in those locations show up only after you attempt to customize some aspect of a portfolio from My AOL Today.

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Last Updated September 16, 2003