Yahoo Finance · 2023
Improving portfolio tracking for increased accuracy
Context
Yahoo Finance helps investors track their portfolios, but gaps in trade reporting and cash flow tracking made it hard for users to get a full picture of their investments. The platform only supported basic buy and sell entries, but didn’t allow users to log more complex transactions like short sales, buy-to-cover trades, or multiple lots at different prices. Without these, investors couldn’t accurately track their realized vs. unrealized gains or analyze their positions properly.
At the same time, cash flow was disconnected from the portfolio, meaning profits from sales and dividends weren’t reflected in cash balances. Users had to manually track available funds, which made it harder to see what was actually investable. These limitations created friction, reduced engagement, and pushed users toward other tools with better portfolio tracking.
Why this mattered?
Despite these gaps, portfolio users were Yahoo Finance’s most engaged audience, with 7x higher engagement and 3x higher ARPU than regular users. Those who linked their brokerage accounts were even more valuable, yet only 1.3M out of 60M users actively used the portfolio feature.
By improving trade tracking and cash flow visibility, Yahoo Finance had the opportunity to increase portfolio adoption, drive engagement, and grow monetization—turning a key pain point into a competitive advantage.
Solution
Enhanced Portfolio Views
On the main portfolio screen, we gave users more control over how they get a view of the performance of their overall portfolios, allowing them to toggle between: total equity, total gain, and today’s gain. This flexibility lets users quickly assess their overall returns or focus on the total value of their holdings.
Past Transactions and Management
Tracking holdings and transactions is central to portfolio management, but previously, users had limited ways to interact with past trades. There was no clear way to filter, analyze, or edit transactions, and making corrections required deleting and manually re-entering trades, which often led to inaccuracies in performance tracking.
We introduced detailed transaction views, allowing users to see their entire portfolio history or drill down into specific stock transactions. With the ability to filter by ticker and transaction type, users now get a clearer view of their trade patterns and strategy effectiveness. Additionally, we enabled direct transaction editing, eliminating the need for manual re-entry and ensuring that portfolio data remains accurate and up to date.
Detailed Transactions
Previously, users could only add stock purchases, with no way to log when they sold shares. This meant that realized vs. unrealized gains weren’t tracked accurately, leading to misleading performance insights. If a user sold a stock, the system still displayed it as a holding, requiring manual adjustments and causing discrepancies in their portfolio data.
To solve this, we introduced sell transactions, allowing users to properly log stock sales, which automatically updates gains, cash balances, and portfolio allocation. We also expanded support for short sales, buy-to-cover trades, and dividend reinvestments, ensuring that investors with more advanced strategies could track their trades accurately.
