Get the most out of Google Alerts for stocks with our instant spreadsheet organizer
In our last post, we examined Google Alerts—one of the least used, but most useful, tools Google offers—and we explained how to make the most of Alerts with our instant spreadsheet extension, Export Emails to Google Sheets. In this follow-up post, we’ll look at one specific way that you can use Google Alerts and Export Emails to Google Sheets together for your benefit: tracking stock news.
We promise this: armed with these two unique tools and the three tips that we divulge below, you and your portfolio should start to breathe a little easier.
And the best part? Both tools are free. Which means that, while you’re saving the big bucks that a bells-and-whistles alert system would cost, you’ll still be up-to-date on market activity.
Take Google Alerts further with a slick organizational scheme
If you don’t already know, Google Alerts uses the Google search engine to monitor keywords of your choosing—then sends you email notifications when new results for those keywords appear on the internet. This makes it a powerful tool for staying current on what matters to you most. And when it comes to stocks, staying current is power.
However, Google Alerts doesn’t make it easy to gather all of your alerts into one convenient location. Instead, you receive individual emails with each newly published media story. And in the world of financial markets—where time is money—the distractions of opening, closing, and then opening more emails will break your workday focus. Why waste precious moments you can’t get back? When you use Export to Google Sheets’s tailor-made Google Alerts parsing tool, you’ll instantly create a self-updating spreadsheet that includes all of your Google Alerts on stock news. You’ll have pre-set tabs for the following categories:
- Google Alert keyword search term
- Publisher of the content (e.g. Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Morningstar)
- Brief summary of the content
- A URL of the content
- A link to share the news on Facebook and Twitter
- A way to flag the Google Alert as irrelevant (to Google)
- An area for you to include any personal notes
- Total number (running tally) of alerts per keyword
- Total list of publishers who mentioned each keyword
With your Google Alerts neatly organized into a real-time spreadsheet, not only will you have everything in one place; you’ll also be able to track the media that’s emerging about a certain topic or company over time. That way, you’ll be well-informed when making decisions.
3 ingenious tips to optimize your Google Alerts for stocks news
Investors can use Google Alerts for stock market intelligence in a variety of creative ways. We’ve laid out the top 3 below:
1. Keep abreast of big events that can cause fluctuations in the market, or in your stocks
Global happenings like natural disasters, acts of terrorism, political conflict, and health crises (…like our current pandemic) can all weigh heavy on share prices. Depending on the stock you invest in, you’ll want to create Google Alerts for global events that might significantly disrupt your stock.
For example, if you invest in Tesla, you may want to create an alert with the keyphrase “electric cars competition,” but you’ll also want one for “clean energy innovations.” If you invest in Chipotle, you may want to set alerts for “fast casual dining investments,” but you’ll also want to set one for “meat shortage.” You may even want to set an alert for “domestic terrorism” if you invest in an aviation company, so you can be in-the-know if an act of violence unsettles stock prices in that industry.
2. Keep tabs on analyst predictions
Analyst predictions not only report on market trends; they often drive them. When a reputable analyst—say, for example, at Goldman Sachs or Deutche Bank—predicts an upgrade in a certain stock’s ratings, it’s in your interest to listen. But you might miss the opportunity to capitalize on these experts’ important statements—that is, if you don’t get an alert when their forecasts break out into the public domain.
Therefore, we recommend creating one of the following stocks-expert-related Google Alerts:
- “analyst” “rating changes”
- “news report from analyst”
- “[INSERT SPECIFIC STOCK]” “analyst” “ratings upgrade”
- “[INSERT SPECIFIC STOCK]” “analyst” “ratings downgrade”
Your spreadsheet will then offer a bigger picture of these alerts, tracking analyst suggestions over time for the stocks you care about.
3. Market trends: growth stocks to value stocks
Oftentimes, investors do better by allocating not to individual stocks, but to the proper blend of stocks across sectors and categories—which is why so many choose to invest in one or more exchange traded funds (ETFs). Do you own, or want to own, shares of an ETF? If so, staying current on larger market trends will determine your best actions. You’ll want to watch out for signals that suggest a change in wise portfolio allocation.
Say that you invest in an ETF that includes growth stocks, especially small capitalization (small cap) growth stocks. Instability in the market may cause analysts to suggest switching over to large cap value stocks like those in the S&P 500. Or, if you’ve invested in large cap value ETFs, the opposite may be true: projections of market boom may make it advisable to invest in smaller stocks that have outstanding earnings growth potential.
That’s what makes it useful to set up Google Alerts with the following keywords:
- “allocation” “to value”
- “allocation” “to growth”
You’ll be alerted about suggestions to rethink your investment strategies. When you view your spreadsheet, you’ll have a bird’s eye view of the websites that make these suggestions, and when they made them.
In summary…
It’s clear that Export Emails to Google Sheets and Google Alerts can combine to give you a leg up when it comes to investing. To recap, you’ll want to remember:
- Create Google Alerts for stock news to save time and energy surveying the market.
- Organize those alerts into a spreadsheet with the click of a button.
- Use Alerts, laid out in your spreadsheet, to stay on top of anything that can affect your stocks’ prices.
- Organized alerts make it easy to monitor multiple expert opinions on specific stocks.
- Use your spreadsheet to monitor expert opinions on investment strategy.
So, don’t wait! Download Export Emails to Google Sheets today to give your portfolio the boost it deserves.