Selftrade watchlists

Our free-to-use watchlists are a handy way to keep track of investments and indices of interest to you, try out your skills or test a new strategy.

You can create a portfolio and try some fantasy trading to see what could happen to your money if you were to follow that approach for real.

How to set up a watchlist

1. Select 'New watchlist' and choose a name for the watchlist. You can set up more than one watchlist, useful for example if you want to monitor different sectors separately.
2. To add stock to your watchlist, use the Search facility at the top of the page to find the stock you are interested in, click on the 'Watchlist' icon and choose 'add'.

Using your watchlist

Your watchlist can also be used to try some fantasy trading. Firstly, add some 'cash' to your watchlist by clicking on the Portfolio view and then +cash on the left hand side of your list.

Then, when adding investments to your list, choose the 'buy' option and enter the number of shares. To 'sell' and investment once it's in your watchlist portfolio, click on the + icon next to the stock to bring-up the trade ticket, enter the number and click 'sell'.

You can set-up email alerts on a range of measures – click on the alert icon next to the investment for which you would like to receive alerts. Then select your preferred measures and timescale.

View your watchlist portfolio from different perspectives by clicking on the different views at the top of you list. You can also customise a view by adding other measures you're interested in.

If you are a Selftrade customer, when you want to trade a watchlist stock for real, simply click on trade tick icon and enter your order in the normal way.