Get Portfolio alerts based on Guru / Insider activity

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Sep 16, 2010
GuruFocus is an excellent community for fundamentally oriented investors. The community authors and the editors combine to provide a good mix of stock market news, Guru coverage, Book reviews and stock analysis. There are several other features such as DCF tool, screeners, Insider buying alerts and premium subscription features.


One of the premium features is the ability to receive alerts about the activity of Guru Investors that you track. So, if you are tracking Buffett or Prem Watsa you will know when they have made a trade in their portfolio. While this is useful, I was looking for a feature that would alert me when a Guru Investor traded a stock from my Portfolio. Well, the good news is that GuruFocus has such a feature and its is FREE!


To use the feature, go to the My Space and click on My Portfolios. To create a new portfolio, click the Create New Portfolio. Provide a name for the portfolio (eg. Retailers ) and decide if you want to keep it public or private. Next enter the symbols comma separated or upload an Excel file ( Sample file is available to download). Enter a description of the Portfolio and submit. This should take you a couple of minutes.


The next step is where you set alerts for the portfolio. Click 'Set Alert'. You will see your stocks in the portfolio one on each row. For each company, you can set the following alerts:


  • Guru Buys
  • Guru Sells
  • Insider Buys
  • Insider sells
At this moment, price based alerts have been turned off. I would actually prefer to get notified when a stock I own reaches my selling price or buying price. I would hope someone at GuruFocus is reading this and considers enabling those alerts. The alerts are sent via email. Once you are done click submit. You can always go back and add new stocks or change the alerts.


Another cool feature is the Guru View. It shows which Gurus own each of your stocks, Insider activity in the last 6 months and a price chart.


Now whenever there is an activity on one or more of these stocks I receive an email alert that tells me about the activity of a Guru Investor or Insider. Most investors are used to setting up a Portfolio on Yahoo or Google Finance to track their holdings and transactions. Those sites calculate the gains and losses for your open positions. However, none of these sites alert you about Guru Investors and Insider activities for your stocks. I think you may find this feature valuable.


Cheers


Adib