Devlog of custom investment tracking website

March 19th, 2021

Devlog #1: Planning

Overall basic plan:

1. Research web portals, APIs, and mobile apps to collect USA stock data
2. Research how to setup stock transaction accounts
3. Determine what to invest in/divide up funds.

Plan for website:

1. Tech stack: React app, NodeJS?
2. Purpose is to have quick access to check on stats of the stocks/funds I bought.
3. V1 will be pretty static, if I want to add any new funds onto dashboard will have to do manually.
4. Future plans? Add database, ability to add the stocks from user end, filter stats.

March 20th, 2021

Devlog #2: Research

Resources:

1. (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-invest-dividend-stocks)
2. (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/how-to-research-stocks)
3. (https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/what-is-how-to-open-brokerage-account)
4. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE-Pys46pMk)
5. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGcOGYkttI4)

Online brokerage options:

1. Fidelity
2. TD Ameritrade
3. Charles Schwab
4. Vanguard
5. E-Trade

Mutual Funds:

1. Convenience, diversification, active management (service fees)
2. Total market fund

Index Funds:

1. Like mutual funds but no active management (not as much fees)
2. Automatic reinvestment
3. Expense ratios less than 0.2%

ETFs:

1. Like index funds, but can trade anytime, whereas index is once a day

Asset Allocation:

1. Split stocks/bonds
2. Simple equation: 100 - Age = % stock allocation
3. Fancier split: 30% Domestic equity, 15% international equity, 10% emerging market equity, 15% US treasuries, 15% tips, 15% real estate

Dividend portfolio:

1. Track record
2. Look at yields - don’t chase
3. Check payout ratio
4. Diversification

Investments plan?

1. Current starting funds: $6k

2. Index funds: $4k

   Plan: two index funds, Small cap index fund and Total Market index fund, $2k each

3. Individual investments/own research/management (prob high dividend stocks): $2k

   Plan: more research into high dividend stocks, starting with the list here, remember to diversify

March 21st, 2021

Devlog #3: Tech Research

Finished watching basic React JS tutorials, currently looking up similar projects as reference.

API research: IEX Cloud (free), Alpha Vantage (free), Xignite, Intrinio, Polygon.io, Tradier (free)

Proof of concept: Install react app, make sure API calls work and can create the charts/tickers. Design will be afterwards.

March 25th, 2021

Devlog #4: Basic website built

Finished building a basic react app that uses the Alpha Vantage API and creates a basic chart of the requested stock. I ran into a problem creating the chart using Plotly, as the current version has a memory error that hasn’t been fixed in two years. Found a workaround solution here. Now that I know the basics, going to go back to researching what stocks to buy before coming back to focus on this project, as the main purpose of it is to have a very easy way track the stocks I will buy. Below is a screenshot of what the app looks like currently.