You don't need a tool for that, you can safely assume you're underperforming the market just like the vast majority of professionals. Even if you managed to outperform on an absolute basis, you'd be underperforming on a risk-adjusted basis.
I’m looking for a tool that helps me learn how successful my stock trades were. It’s easy to be happy after selling a stock for a profit, but what if a lower-risk ETF would have gone up more over the same period?? Suddenly I’m not so smart
Heck, Schwab doesn’t even show annualized % gain for the stocks I own, so the “up 300%” looks amazing but I have to compare it to the timeframe, which gets complex if I’ve been buying lots over time.
Lastly people forget to take taxes into account. Sometimes it’s better to sell after 8mo and pay short-term cap gains tax, but I have to do all this math myself. Obviously it won’t know my entire tax situation but it could estimate if I give it the brackets I’ll probably end up in.
Is there a portfolio tool that can help me here?
You don't need a tool for that, you can safely assume you're underperforming the market just like the vast majority of professionals. Even if you managed to outperform on an absolute basis, you'd be underperforming on a risk-adjusted basis.
Just compare it to the sp500? If you end up above it, you did fine. What are you looking for exactly?
Put your trades in a spreadsheet. Put QQQ and VTI price from the time you bought as well (or whatever etf you want to track) Same when you sell. Compare.
It's a good practice, but I would add it's not enough. People buy and sell and pay taxes. So you want to compare the overall portfolio growth and compare it to SP500/NASDAQ. Typically lot of people that say not to spend the money but to buy another stock forget to consider the 15-40% taxes on the gain they typically pay and that heavily impact they performance. They also are happy with the great trades they made forgetting the bad trade are as important. Also why SP500 or NASDAQ ? It's one level of comparison. But if you mostly buy tech growth stock, isn't what you should compare to an index of tech growth stock ? All the same if you want low risk and safe, should you compare yourself to NASDAQ ?
eToro has a virtual trades feature for that reason
Is there a portfolio tool that can help me here?
This may do what you want (works with Fidelity): https://github.com/bgits/personal_portfolio_analyst
people forget to take taxes into account
Do your gambling trading in an IRA brokerage account, and you won't have that complication until you have the time to "play tax-bracket-bingo" when you're in your late 60s and early 70s.
Standard brokerage screens show simple money-weighted returns, which get distorted by the timing and size of cash deposits. To isolate pure asset selection skill from capital inflows, you have to compute Time-Weighted Return (TWR). TWR breaks your performance into sub-periods between cash flows so a fresh deposit right before a market dip doesn't artificially drag down your calculated return. For tactical trades, you also have to factor in capital drag math before celebrating a win. If you pull out a $50k gain in a taxable account at a 20% federal and state rate, you eat a $10k tax hit immediately. The underlying benchmark doesn't just need to match your gross gain, it has to beat your net post-tax capital compounding base.
Use a portfolio tracker that compares your returns to ETFs and calculates annualized performance. Total profit alone doesn’t show whether you actually beat the market. Focus on annualized returns, risk, and taxes when evaluating trades. Feel free to check the trading community in my profile for more tool recommendations and portfolio tips. You might find some useful resources from there.
Google sheets. They have integration for all stock tickers, you can make it go from a certain date, put in how much cash you would have invested, everything