Everyday institutional-grade
stock & portfolio analysis

Our goal is simple: give everyday investors the same data professional funds use to judge stocks and portfolios, in plain English.
✦ Completely free — no account needed, no credit card, no limits

WHAT YOU GET

JOURNAL

  • Trade log — record why you bought, review what worked
  • Investment thesis — the plan you re-read before panic-selling
  • Realized gains — win rate, short vs long-term

PORTFOLIO

  • Expected return & risk — across everything you own
  • Benchmark & crisis — beating the S&P 500? 2008? COVID?
  • Optimize & diversify — a better split of what you hold

STOCKS

  • Valuation — is it expensive, and the numbers behind it
  • Financial statements — revenue, margins, company health
  • Side-by-side comparison — and the effect on your portfolio
Build a full PDF report from any section — and every number shows the formula behind it.
PORTFOLIO LAB
Don't have an account? Create one free
FREE
Account & Billing
Tutorial
Sign out
✉ Please verify your email — we sent a link to your inbox. Resend email
⚠ Live market data is unavailable right now. This is on our end, not yours — your saved data is safe. Check again
Portfolio DashboardGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Holdings
Enter your ticker symbols and dollar amounts. Click Fetch Prices & Analyze to run live data.
CASH & SAVINGS
Add checking, savings, or money market. Cash counts toward your total, earns the rate you set, and lowers your overall risk.
AM I DIVERSIFIED?
The most common blind spot is having most of your money in one industry without realising it. This shows how your money is actually split.
Improve My MixGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
What matters most to you?
Automatic lets the optimizer pick sensible limits for you.
Monte Carlo SimulationGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Plays out the next year 1,000 times to show where your money could land — best case, typical, and worst. The risk numbers say how bad a bad year gets.
Fat-Tailed (recommended) assumes crashes happen more often than a bell curve says — a more honest worst case. Standard is the usual math, which understates big losses.
Black-Scholes Option PricingGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Prices call and put options from the live share price, and shows what you'd make or lose at five different prices.
Squeeze Momentum ScannerGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
How it works: a "squeeze" means the price has gone quiet and is building energy. When it releases, the stock often moves fast.

Long: squeeze released, momentum up.
Short: squeeze released, momentum down.
Strategy TesterBETAGlossary
This section is in beta. The engine and the numbers are verified against hand-computed results, but it is new, it is the most complex part of the app, and strategy testing is the easiest place in investing to fool yourself. Treat every result as a starting point for thinking, not an answer. If something looks wrong, it might be — please tell us.
Tested on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice. What worked before is not a forecast.
TEST ON
SHOW
THE RULES
BUY
SELL
Leave the box empty and your money waits in cash. Put a ticker in it — AGG or TLT for bonds — and it waits there instead, earning what that asset earned. Stops and take-profits still fire on any day; only the rules wait for the month.
ADDING MONEY AS YOU GO
Change any box above, save it, and find it under My strategies in the library — where you can also send it to us.
Monthly SeasonalityGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Shows average return by calendar month over your selected lookback period. Helps identify historically strong and weak months for a given ticker.
Historical Crisis SimulationGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Portfolio Report
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Turn your saved holdings into one shareable report. Pick what to include, and we run each analysis and put it together — with a PDF you can download or send to someone.
WHAT TO INCLUDE
SectorsBETA
How each part of the stock market is doing: what it costs, how profitable it is, who the biggest companies are, and how it has done against the S&P 500. Built from today’s S&P 500 companies, refreshed daily. Educational only, not financial advice.
Loading sector data…
Compare Stocks
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Put two to four stocks side by side to see which is bigger, steadier, pays more income, and has performed better — then check what each would do to your own portfolio.
Stock Report
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Pick a stock, tick what you want included, and get one combined report — the numbers, the charts, and a plain-English read-out in a single place.
Include in report
Stock Dashboard
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Financial StatementsGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Any company's Income Statement (are they profitable?), Balance Sheet (own vs. owe), and Cash Flow (is cash really coming in?), plus ratios and valuation. Yahoo Finance data — a snapshot, not audited filings.
Portfolio Thesis
Portfolio structure
Set what you want each type to be. We compare it against what you actually hold and show the gap.
Log a Position
Got filled at multiple prices on one order? Add a row for each fill, the journal blends them into your true average cost.
Exit — Sell / Close (leave blank if still open)
Same here, add a row per fill if you sold in pieces. Leave empty if the position is still open.
Positions
News & Movers
Refreshed three times a day — 8:00 AM, 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM ET. Everyone sees the same digest, so nothing is fetched per visit.
What moved and why
Today's reading
Economic Cycle
Loading economic data…
Chart
Compare with: or
RANGE
STYLE
OVERLAYS
SCALE
PANELS
SHOW
DRAW
ZOOM
THIS VIEW
RETURNS
What Beat the S&P 500BETA
Historical returns, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Economic Data
Anything the Federal Reserve publishes. Search their catalogue, pin what you care about, and it stays here next time. Everything refreshes with the rest of the economy data each Friday.
Find a series
LAYOUT
Economic Indicators
Loading indicators…
Price Alerts
Price Alerts Get notified at your target priceEnable Alerts
Get notified even when the app is closed.
Watchlist
Track anything you do not own yet. Prices only — add a price alert if you want to be told when it hits a number.
WOULD THIS HELP MY PORTFOLIO?
See what your portfolio would have looked like over the past year if you had held this alongside your existing holdings.
Dividend Reinvestment (DRIP) Glossary
Reinvesting dividends vs. taking the cash. Yields and dividend growth are real; price growth is your guess.
Valuation Models
These estimate what a company is worth. The interactive DCF and Dividend models below use assumptions you control, so treat them as scenarios, not certainties.
Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Calculator
A DCF estimates a company's value by projecting its future free cash flow and discounting it back to today. Adjust the assumptions, this is an estimate, not a guarantee.
Growth at a Reasonable Price (PEG)
The DCF above asks what the cash is worth. PEG asks a blunter question: are you paying more for the growth than the growth is worth? Peter Lynch's rule of thumb is that a fair multiple is roughly the growth rate — a company growing 15% a year is fairly priced near 15× earnings. So PEG = P/E ÷ growth rate, and 1.0 is the line.
Financial Ratios
Computed from the most recent annual statements (even when viewing quarterly above, since ratios like turnover need a full year). Items without source data show "no data" rather than a guess.
Benchmark ComparisonGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Compare your saved portfolio or any single stock against a market index or sector benchmark. See how you stack up on returns, risk, and consistency, with a plain-English breakdown at the bottom.
Compare your portfolio
Rebalance & Cash DeploymentGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
Drift from your structure targets
Dividend IncomeGlossary
Estimates based on historical data, for educational purposes only — not financial advice.
See dividend payments for your whole portfolio or any single stock, per-share amounts, pay dates, yield, and how often they pay. For your portfolio, it calculates your actual annual dividend income in dollars.
Uses the holdings from your active portfolio (—). Make sure you've saved holdings on the Dashboard.
© 2026 XY Creations · Portfolio Lab · All rights reserved
Portfolio Lab is an educational tool. Not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Consult a licensed financial advisor before making investment decisions.
Terms Privacy Disclaimer Account & Billing
⚡
UPGRADE YOUR PLAN
Upgrade for more analyses, unlimited alerts, and an ad-free experience.
PRO
$3.99/mo
15 analyses/day
Unlimited alerts
Cancel anytime
PRO+
$5.99/mo
Unlimited analyses
No ads
Cancel anytime
Subscriptions auto-renew (monthly or annually). Cancel anytime from Account settings. Powered by Stripe.
Holding Performance
Add Cash Holding
Dividend Log
Dividends are found automatically from this holding's real payment history. Log them here only if you want your own numbers used instead — anything you add takes over for this position.
WHAT'S NEW

Here is what changed since you were last here, so nothing catches you out.

STRATEGY TESTER — THE FULL GUIDE

The Strategy Tester answers one question: if I had followed this rule, what would my money have become? You say when to buy and when to sell. It walks through every trading day in the history you choose, follows your rule exactly, and shows the result next to simply buying and holding the same thing, and next to the S&P 500.

A step-by-step tour of the page, pointing at each part.

Start in one minute

  1. The Strategy Library is at the top. In Technical, pick one marked START HERE — the Golden cross is a good first one — and press Load & test it.
  2. The library folds away and the strategy appears, with a box saying what it does.
  3. Set your stock, how much and how far back, and press RUN THE TEST. The first line of the result says whether it beat simply holding.

The four steps

  • 1 · Pick a strategy — where you start. Only the stock (or portfolio), the money and how far back can be set until you choose one.
  • 2 · See what it does — where loading takes you. The rules are not shown at all: you set the stock, your money and how far back, read one sentence saying what the strategy does, and run it — exactly as the card describes it.
  • 3 · Adjust it — unlocks everything. Change the numbers, add a stop, swap the sell rule, and save it as your own variation.
  • 4 · Build your own — a clean start: buy on day one and hold, the line every strategy has to beat. Change one thing at a time.

Pairs trading and portfolio strategies follow the same steps: in step 2 only the tickers or list, the money and the years are shown.

One stock or My portfolio

One stock tests the rule on a single ticker. My portfolio tests the same rule on every holding of a portfolio you saved on the dashboard: each holding starts with its share of the money by today’s value and runs the rule on its own, and the result is compared with holding the same mix. That is hindsight — it uses the stocks you hold now as if you had owned them all along — and the page says so. Cash entries are not included, up to 30 holdings at a time.

Beginner or Advanced

This decides how much of the rule builder shows when you adjust or build. Beginner shows the essentials: the stock, how much, how far back, one buy rule, one sell rule, a stop loss and a take profit, and adding money as you go. The rule lists are shorter, and each rule explains itself underneath. Advanced adds a second condition on each side, somewhere other than cash for your money to wait, acting only once a month, a different benchmark, and the cost per trade.

If you load a strategy that uses Advanced settings while in Beginner, those settings stay on — otherwise you would be testing a different strategy under its name — and a yellow box lists them in plain words, with buttons to see them or turn them off.

What you are testing

  • Stock — any ticker: a company (AAPL), a fund (SPY), a bond fund (AGG).
  • Starting amount — what you begin with. It changes the dollar figures, not the percentages.
  • How far back — 3 to 20 years, or everything available. Longer tests include more kinds of market; a rule that only worked in one decade is worth less.
  • Compare against (Advanced) — the benchmark line, SPY by default, which is the S&P 500.

The buy rule and the sell rule

Each day the tester checks your buy rule if you are out, and your sell rule if you are in. When a rule is true at one day’s close, the trade happens at the next day’s close — you cannot trade on a closing price you have not seen. A rule that is true for weeks (“the price is above its 200-day average”) keeps you in for those weeks; a rule that fires once (“the 50-day crosses above the 200-day”) is true only on the day it happens.

The kinds of rule, in plain words:

  • Falls and rises — down X% from its highest close in the last N days; up X% from its lowest; at least X% below its highest close since the test began; N down (or up) days in a row; a new N-day high (a breakout) or low.
  • Averages — the average closing price over the last N days. Price above or below it, or a faster average crossing a slower one (the golden and death crosses). Exponential averages count recent days more, so they react sooner.
  • Momentum — the price change over the last N days above or below X%. 252 trading days is about a year.
  • RSI — scores the last N days from 0 to 100 by comparing up days with down days. Under 30 is the classic “oversold” line, over 70 “overbought”.
  • MACD — the gap between the 12-day and 26-day exponential averages, against a 9-day average of that gap (its signal line). Crossing up means momentum is turning up.
  • Bollinger bands — two standard deviations either side of the 20-day average. Outside them is an unusually large move.
  • Volatility — how much the price has been swinging, as a yearly percentage. Calm is low, wild is high.
  • Calendar — the month is (or is not) between two months. 11 to 4 means November to April.
  • The business — dividend yield (dividends actually paid over the past year ÷ the price) and P/E (price ÷ the last four quarters of earnings, using only figures already filed by that date). P/E works only for companies that file with the SEC; funds have none.
  • Beating what you would hold instead (Advanced) — compares the stock’s return with the ticker in “While out, hold”.

Never as a sell rule means hold to the end. From the start as a buy rule means buy on day one.

Stop loss and take profit

A stop loss sells if the price falls that far below what you paid; a take profit sells once you are up that much. Both are checked against each day’s closing price, so a stock that falls straight through your stop in one day sells at that close, possibly well below the stop. They fire on any day, even when the rules only act monthly. 0 turns either off.

Adding money as you go

Switch Adding money as you go on to include deposits in the test; off means just the starting amount. It is never hidden, and it stays exactly as you set it when you load a library strategy.

  • Regular deposits (dollar-cost averaging) — a fixed amount every week, month, quarter or year. Raise it by a percentage every 1 to 50 years, whatever matches your income: 3% every 2 years means $200 a month becomes $206, then $212.18, and so on.
  • One-off deposits — any number of them, each a set amount a set time after you start (3 years, or 2.5). One dated after the test ends is not added, and the result says so.

Every line on the chart gets the same deposits on the same days, so the comparison stays fair. Money that arrives while the rules have you out waits with the rest of your cash (or in whatever you chose to wait in). With deposits, the yearly figure is money-weighted: your latest deposit has not had as long to grow as your first, and the figure accounts for that. In My portfolio, each deposit is split across your holdings by their starting share. Saving a strategy saves its money plan too. RUN THEM ALL ranks on the starting amount alone, so every strategy is compared on the same terms.

The Advanced extras

  • + and also… — a second condition. AND needs both (buy a dip, but only while above the 200-day); OR takes either (sell on the bounce or if the trend breaks).
  • While out, hold — put a ticker here (AGG or TLT for bonds) and your money waits there between trades, earning what it earned, instead of sitting in cash earning nothing.
  • Only act at the start of each month — rules are checked once a month, like most published momentum strategies. Stops and take profits still fire any day.
  • Cost per trade — charged on every buy and every sell. 0.1% is a fair estimate for a large stock today.

Read it back before you run it

The grey box above the button writes your rules as a sentence. If it does not say what you meant, fix the rule first: the test will answer exactly the question in that sentence.

Reading the result

  • The first line — what your money became, against just holding the same stock and against the benchmark. Making money is not the test; beating holding is.
  • Your strategy / Just holding it — the end value and the yearly rate (the steady yearly return that gives the same result).
  • Worst fall along the way — the biggest drop from a high to a low. Two strategies can end level while one put you through a 50% fall.
  • Trades and Time invested — how often it traded, and how much of the time your money was actually in the stock.
  • The chart — all lines start from the same money on the same day. A flat stretch in yours is time spent in cash.
  • Every trade it made — when it bought, sold, how long it held, what it made (dividends included).
  • Before you believe this — read it every time.

The Strategy Library

  • It sits at the top of the page, open while you choose and folded once you load something; the arrow opens it again.
  • Technical, Quantitative, Fundamental, Pairs trading — strategies that run here, each with the book or paper it comes from. START HERE marks the six worth trying first.
  • How it works on every card — how it works, why it might, and where it goes wrong.
  • Variations — the same idea with different numbers. Details shows the exact rule, what that set changes, and its source; Load puts it in the tester.
  • Not testable yet — real strategies we cannot test with the data here, each saying what it would need.
  • My strategies — the ones you saved.
  • RUN THEM ALL & RANK — tests every strategy and variation on your stock at once and ranks them. Expect most to lose to simply holding; that is the honest answer.

Pairs trading and portfolio strategies

Two kinds of strategy are not one-stock rules, so they have their own panels, which appear in place of the rules when you load one. Pairs trading (One stock mode) watches the gap between two related companies, buys the one that fell behind and sells short the one that ran ahead, and closes when the gap narrows; it charges the cost of borrowing the shorted stock every day. Portfolio strategies (My portfolio mode) hold several stocks at once and rebalance on a schedule: the strongest (momentum), weighting by calm (inverse volatility), or the highest yielders (Dogs of the Dow), on a list or on your own portfolio. 1 · Pick a strategy or 4 · Build your own takes you back to the rules.

Saving, and sending one to us

Change anything, press SAVE THIS STRATEGY, name it, and it is kept under My strategies. From there, Send to Portfolio Lab sends us the exact rule privately; good ones may be added to the library for everyone. You need to be signed in to save.

What a backtest cannot tell you

  • The past is not a forecast. A rule that worked for ten years can fail the next ten.
  • Trying rules until one wins finds luck. Test hundreds of variations and some will beat holding by chance. A rule you can explain, that works across many stocks and periods, is worth more than the best number on one.
  • Taxes are not deducted. A rule that trades often would owe tax on each gain.
  • Cash earns nothing here unless you use “While out, hold”.
  • Lists are today’s. Portfolio strategies use today’s members of the Dow and other lists, so companies that were dropped or went bust are missing, which flatters the result.
  • This is for learning, not advice.
TUTORIAL
Pick the section you want walked through. You do not have to sit through the rest.
TELL US WHAT YOU THINK
Everything here is free — we are building this in the open and your feedback genuinely changes what gets built next. What was confusing, what is missing, what broke?
Apply as My Holdings
1. How should shares be calculated?
2. Where should this be saved?