Frequently Asked Questions

Portfolio Watch aggregates public market data into a single dashboard and an optional daily email digest. It tracks the Zacks Bull and Bear of the Day alongside a simulated performance history, the VIX and VXN volatility gauges, precious metals prices and the gold ratios, a weekly earnings and macroeconomic calendar, and an options income screen covering cash-secured puts and covered calls.

The intent is narrow and deliberate: surface a small number of signals clearly, and explain exactly how each one is constructed, rather than present a wall of indicators with no provenance.

Yes. Every feature is free to use. The site is funded by display advertising and voluntary reader contributions. There is no paid tier, no trial that expires, and no feature held back behind a subscription.

No account or password is required to browse the dashboard. The Zacks pick history, the fear index, and the precious metals panel are all open to anyone.

You only provide an email address if you want a personalized watchlist and the daily digest. The address is what identifies your saved preferences, which is why returning to the site with the same address restores your watchlist.

Nothing on the site is a real-time quote, and you should not use it for execution decisions that depend on a current price.

The fear index and precious metals panels are cached for five minutes. The Zacks picks are scraped every four hours. The options income scan runs twice each trading day, shortly after the open and shortly before the close. The strategy performance chart is recalculated after the close each weekday. Every interval is listed on the methodology page.

Usually timing or definition. Our data is cached and can lag by minutes, or for scheduled jobs by hours. Option prices use the midpoint of bid and ask, or the last traded price when the market is closed, and neither is a price you can necessarily transact at. Brokerages also differ in how they compute fields such as forward P/E, depending on which analyst estimates they use.

For anything that affects a real decision, treat your broker's numbers as authoritative.

For each ticker on your watchlist, the digest reports the Zacks Rank, valuation multiples including forward and trailing P/E, PEG, price to book and price to sales, and short interest as a percentage of float. Values that moved since the previous digest are highlighted so you can scan for changes rather than re-read the whole thing.

It also raises alerts when specific thresholds are crossed: a large shift in the put/call ratio, the implied earnings move when a report is approaching, a significant pre-market gap, and unusually heavy volume in the opening minutes.

Once per trading day, in the morning US Eastern time, Monday through Friday. There are no weekend or market-holiday sends. If you add new tickers, you may receive an immediate digest covering them rather than waiting for the next scheduled run.

Every digest has an unsubscribe link in the footer. Following it pauses delivery immediately while keeping your saved watchlist, so you can resume later without reconfiguring anything.

If you would rather have your data removed entirely, email portfolio-watch@gmail.com from the subscribed address and we will delete it.

For subscribers we store the email address, the tickers on the watchlist, and digest preferences. We store no passwords, because the service does not use them. We do not sell personal data.

The site also uses cookies for analytics and advertising, which you can decline using the banner shown on your first visit. The privacy policy covers this in full.

Two features do. The short company profiles are generated by a language model from the company's own published business summary, and the sentence in the digest describing what changed for a ticker is generated the same way. Both are disclosed on the methodology page.

All quantitative figures come from the data sources rather than from a model. The guides in the Learn section are written and reviewed by us.

No, and this is not a formality. We are not registered investment advisers, brokers, or dealers. We do not know your circumstances, tax position, time horizon, or risk tolerance, and nothing on the site is tailored to them.

The backtested strategy chart in particular is a hypothetical simulation carrying documented biases, not a track record. Investing carries substantial risk of loss, including the loss of the entire amount invested.

Please tell us. Email portfolio-watch@gmail.com with the page, the figure, and what you expected to see. We investigate reported data errors and correct the underlying calculation where the report is confirmed.

Primarily U.S.-listed equities and ETFs, plus the major precious metals futures. Coverage of other markets, very small companies, and recent listings is inconsistent because it depends on what our upstream public data sources provide.