Improving Trade Reporting & Portfolio Analytics
Yahoo · 2023
My Role
Product Designer
Company
Yahoo
Date
2023
Problem
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.
At a Glance
Incomplete performance tracking
Without the ability to track realized vs. unrealized gains, users couldn’t accurately measure portfolio performance, leading to misleading insights.
Limited trade tracking
The lack of support for short sales, buy-to-cover trades, and multiple lots under one stock, or even logging when stocks were sold, meant users couldn’t properly track cost basis or trading strategies, further distorting portfolio analytics.
Disconnected cash flow
Profits from sales and dividend payouts aren't reflected in balances, making total returns appear lower than they actually were, adding to the inaccuracy.
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.
The Portfolio designs in late 2022, lacking trade tracking and cash flow visibility, making it harder to track portfolio performance accurately.
Solution
Given these challenges, our goal was to make Yahoo Finance’s portfolio tool more accurate, complete, and easy to use. We focused on three key areas: improving trade tracking, ensuring cash flow visibility, and making transaction management more intuitive. By addressing these gaps, we could provide users with a clearer picture of their portfolio performance and increase engagement with the feature.
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.
Users can now toggle between total equity, total gain, and today’s gain, giving them more flexibility in how they assess their portfolio’s performance.
Improved View on Past Transactions & Management
When users tap on a stock in their portfolio, they are presented with a drawer view that provides a quick snapshot of their holdings and recent transactions for that ticker. This allows them to assess performance at a glance without leaving the main portfolio screen. From there, users can dive deeper into their trade history, track performance trends, and review cost basis details.
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.
Expanded transaction view for a specific stock, allowing users to review holdings, track trade history, and edit past transactions for better portfolio accuracy.
More 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.
Expanded trade entry options, allowing users to select transaction types, set trade dates, and reference historical price data for more accurate logging.
Additionally, we introduced contextual share price indicators, allowing users to reference historical price data while logging trades. Previously, users had to either rely on memory or manually look up past prices, which often led to incorrect entries and inaccurate cost basis calculations. This update eliminates guesswork, ensuring users enter precise, realistic trade details, reducing errors and preventing discrepancies in portfolio performance tracking.
Lots, Dividends & Cash Balances
To improve cost tracking and portfolio accuracy, we introduced lot-level visibility, allowing users to see exactly when and at what price they purchased shares. Instead of just showing an average price, users can track individual purchases within the same stock, helping them make more informed decisions when reviewing their portfolio or deciding to sell.
We also improved dividend tracking, providing a clear breakdown of payouts per stock so users can easily track their passive income and reinvestment potential. Additionally, users are able to see their cash balances directly to portfolio transactions, ensuring that dividends and funds from sold stocks update in real time, making it easier for users to see how much cash they have available to reinvest.
Users can navigate between different views within their portfolio: transaction, lots, dividends, or cash balances.
Learns and Outcomes
We did wind up releasing this in beta in February of 2023, in parallel with the desktop experience. Our goal was to bring more value to users through improved trade tracking and portfolio insights, but due to the opt-in nature of the release, we didn’t see immediate adoption at scale. However, this approach was necessary to avoid disrupting users’ existing portfolios.
Tradeoff of an Opt-In Approach
Because users have spent years managing their portfolios, any major changes to how they track investments had to be introduced carefully. A forced migration risked breaking user trust or even leading to errors in performance tracking. Instead, we allowed users to copy their existing portfolios and test the new system separately. While this protected their original data, it also meant adoption was slower, as users had to take action to opt in rather than automatically experiencing the improvements.
Value is a Long-Term Game
Since this feature required users to actively opt in and manage a separate portfolio, adoption is expected to grow gradually over time rather than seeing an immediate shift. While engagement wasn’t instant, this approach laid the groundwork for long-term improvements by allowing users to experience the benefits at their own pace. Over time, as more users opt in and recognize the advantages of realized vs. unrealized gains tracking, lot-level insights, and cash flow visibility, this feature has the potential to enhance retention and make Yahoo Finance a stronger portfolio management tool.
