For an investor, keeping track of personal performance is important. Many people believe they know their return rate by calculations in their head, but surprisingly, we always overestimate ourselves. Our actual return usually comes out a few % lower than we expected. These few percentages can add up to the cost of ten of thousands.

Are You a Good Driver?
When people are asked whether they think they are a good driver, more than 80% respond by stating that they are good drivers. Some of these answers came from people who were only recently involved in accidents where they were at fault.
So how good are you?

Track Yourself
Tracking performance also allows an investor to be honest with themselves. As human beings, we tend to dismiss the failures much more often than we try to acknowledge and learn from them. Everyone has made investment mistakes and it is vital to know what went wrong and then to never redo those mistakes. I believe that monitoring your portfolio performance allows you to be reminded of those situations.

The Original Portfolio Excel Spreadsheet
I was sick of all the portfolio managing programs that you had to buy and install etc, so I made my own. But one day, I came across a great blog titled 'Experiments in Finance' where the author had created a great Portfolio Performance vs S&P 500 spreadsheet. Please visit the blog to get the original file and see the instructions.

Automated Excel
Now if you're like me and can't be bothered looking up the latest prices and then recording them manually, a great plugin for excel, written by Randy, is available at Randy's Yahoo Group. You can find more info by going to 'Files > Documentation' section on the Yahoo group. For your convenience, I've made a link so you can download it right here.

Instructions
The instructions are pretty simple, download the zip file containing the add-in and its supplementary files and extract all of the files into the "C:\Program Files\SMF Add-in" file folder on your computer. Then open Excel, make sure a blank workbook is open, choose the menu Tools->Add-Ins, in the dialog box which opens choose Browse and choose the folder “C:\Program Files\SMF Add-in” and then choose the file “RCH_Stock_Market_Functions.xla” and click OK.

Automated Portfolio Spreadsheet
Utilising the excel add-in, latest prices, historical prices for all ticker prices can be retrieved. You just add the stock symbol, no. of shares bought, purchase price and date of purchase and the rest should be updated.

Few Quick Comments
The #DIV/0! error you see is nothing. Just ignore it. It is the excel function spitting an error because there are no values available for an empty cell.

Feel free to modify it and share it.
If you are having trouble let me know and I will try to help.

Download Section
Randy's SMF Add-in
Original Portfolio Performance vs S&P 500 spreadsheet & Instructions
Automated Old School Value Version

How to Install
You have to unzip the file into c:/program files/SMF Add-In
If you put it in any other folder it wont work.

For Excel 2003:
1. On the Tools menu, click Add-Ins.
2. Click the Browse button and navigate to the smf add ins folder
3. Select the add in file that you see and then click OK.
4. Click Yes to any file copy or overwrite prompts.
5. Verify the Stock Market Function add in box is checked.
6. Press OK.

For Excel 2007:
1. Click the orb and then click on excel options
2. Click Add in
3. Down the bottom there is a drop down list and next to it there is a move button (I think). Click on the button
4. Navigate to the SMF add in folders
5. select the file and then click OK.
6. Verify the Stock Market Function add in box is checked.
7. Press OK

Open the spreadsheet, enter and ticker and you will see a "calculating xx%" in the bottom right corner. You are good to go.

Note: if you download the file, copy it to a USB and then copy it back to another folder or computer, MAKE SURE that the data in the "Statements" tab is pointing to c:/program files/SMF Add-in and not your USB drive.