Skip to main content
editor's blog

Our time-starved readers keep telling us they want customization, so we have built a host of features.

Recently we introduced a powerful suite of features for investors called Globe Investor Tools, available exclusively to subscribers of Globe Unlimited. At the same time, we made it easier for our customers to contact support and give us feedback. If you haven't tried them yet, now's a better time than ever. Learn more about the tools in my blog post here.

We're listening to your input and are working to fix some technical bugs that you, our valued readers, helped us identify. These kinds of bugs often pop up when a new product is released to such a large group. Here's what we've fixed since we launched Globe Investor Tools a couple of months ago:

1) Adding investments to Watchlist and Portfolio

All users setting up new Watchlists were seeing an error message intermittently when compiling their holdings, and some Portfolios were not saving properly. Building your list of investments is smoother after the fix we put in place, and we encourage you to explore and comment on the new layout.

2) 'Your Equities Right Now' infographic

We have fixed a slight discrepancy between the one-day change value in the large infographic at the top of the new Portfolio when compared with the table underneath it, due to some currency adjustments that needed to be made. You can expand the infographic to see a larger, more detailed version by clicking anywhere on the image with the green and red circles representing your holdings.

3) Stocks & ETFs rollups

The per cent values for Today's gain, Capital gains and Dividends since inception were updated to calculate accurately. We verified the calculations for each stock's individual gain to make sure all stocks reflect today's change.

4) Seeing your stocks and reports

Some users who browse our website using certain versions of Chrome were seeing their holdings seemingly disappear from their Portfolios, because the rows would not render. They were also having trouble opening StockReports+, one of the most exclusive features of Globe Investor Tools. These problems are fixed thanks to the users who took the time to supply us with their browser specifications to help us squash this bug. We try to test all configurations, but browser updates get released very quickly.

5) Portfolio menu

Similar help from our Firefox users helped us fix a bug where users couldn't access the menu that allows you to view transactions, enter additional buys and sells, delete a holding and toggle between reinvesting dividends or paying them to a cash account.

6) Adding funds to your Portfolio

The new Portfolio has a handy feature that will bring up the historical price of a security based on the investment date you provide. For funds, prices for older dates were not appearing. The historical data on prices and distributions is now available.

7) Return on Investment chart

The main page for the new tools includes a chart that plots the performance of all of your Portfolios since inception. The chart wasn't calculating Portfolio data properly, but it is now. The chart now plots data from the earliest start date for all of your Portfolios.

8) Inter-listed stock data

The last of the fixes was for how we display financial metrics like dividends and target prices for inter-listed stocks. In some cases, when our users were looking at Canadian listings, we were displaying values from other exchanges.

This year, we're turning our attention to enhancing the features, starting with an easy way to import data from an existing Portfolio or Watchlist. This request was the top Globe Investor Tools suggestion at feedback.theglobeandmail.com, and that's why we've made it our top priority.

You can leave more ideas there for us to evaluate and help us decide what we'll tackle next.

Interact with The Globe