For those that are investing already and have multiple stocks, what are your thoughts about using excel to track your stocks?

Good idea in the firstplace, particularly when you use the XIRR function in an attempt to calculate the true annual longterm averaged % performance.

Two caveats:

#1 there are also other completely different approaches to calculate these annual longterm returns, particularly time weighted versus money weighted:

https://help.sharesight.com/performance_calcula...

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/money-weig...

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/time-weigh...

So there possibly is no single true method.

#2 Starting with Ecxel seems nice and straightforward, but with time all your efforts are hindered and made ever more complicated with among others:

-dividends and their reinvestments

-stock splits of equity, particularly when bought at different dates

-mergers

-total stock defaults

-trading fees, account maintenance fees, other fees

-taxes (dividends, interest, capital gains, tax on assets) and processed tax reclaims

-necessary currency (SGD versus USD f.ex.) adjusting for different buy/sell dates

My practical experience is that in the end with multiple investments it gets too complicated, and possibly, though formally it is merely mathematics, also other special software cannot resolve really to have most detailed true total returns.

My own approach:

for important investments on the free Bigcharts advanced website I create a chart like this that can be via Word put into a .html file, so with every website retrieval it gets autoupdated.

example STI ETF measured against S&P500 benchmark:

https://api.wsj.net/api/kaavio/charts/big.chart...

Use stocks cafe instead. The app pulls daily prices, and does the tracking for you. You only need to input the buy / sell prices. If you are serious about tracking performance, you should input any additional / recurring fees like custodian fees.