Account Management

We created Scottrade Portfolio Manager to help you develop an investment strategy that works toward your goals and gives you more confidence and control over your investment decisions. The articles below provide describe how the tools inside Portfolio Manager can help you stay committed to your strategy and have the confidence you need to successfully execute your plan. Plus, we're here to help you every step of the way with online and in-person support when you need it.

Scottrade® Portfolio Manager displays the current allocation of your account in terms of your exposure to seven different areas of the market called market segments. The Current Allocation section offers you a graphic breakdown of the assets in your account by market segment and displays the percentage of your portfolio made up by each segment to help you determine whether the asset balance of your portfolio matches your investment strategy.

Scottrade® Portfolio Manager offers five different asset allocation models, called target models, to help you choose an allocation that works with you toward meeting your investment goals. Each target model represents a different investment strategy by using a unique asset allocation to diversify investments across six market segments in a different way. A seventh market segment represents the additional positions in your account including options and short-term investments.

To help you select a target model, this section provides key information including the best and worst returns for each model at different intervals and the risk and return associated with the target model and the market segments included in each model.

The allocation process is designed to help you update the way your portfolio is diversified across different market segments to align your portfolio with your investment strategy and/or a target model you selected. Using our Allocation Tool, you can enter the exact percent or dollar amount of your portfolio you want allocated to each of your assets and save those allocations to an action plan.

Once you've selected a target model to diversify your positions across the different market segments, you're ready to start using Morningstar's Investment Finder to diversify your portfolio within each market segment. Morningstar's Investment Finder offers you an easy way to search for new investments that can help you achieve investment variety and address company-specific risk within your portfolio.

With the X-Ray tool, you can take advantage of in-depth market visibility that offers you a look at how your portfolio is allocated across different areas of the market and helps you update your allocations to align with your investment strategy.

The Performance Review chart offers you a way to review different investment combinations and asset allocations to see how they may have performed in the past. It's important to realize that this chart displays hypothetical historical growth for both your current portfolio and Action Plan Model (if you created one) – the past performance displayed doesn't reflect any changes that were made in your account or any corporate actions in your holdings.

The Portfolio Concentration table offers you visibility into your portfolio that can help you evaluate the diversification of your assets and identify market segments or investments in which you may be too heavily concentrated. Portfolios that are too heavily concentrated in one area run the risk of decreasing in value rapidly if the market value of a single asset declines. On the other hand, investing heavily in one investment or a single market segment that's experiencing an upward trend can potentially be beneficial. It's important to research each investment and determine your personal level of risk tolerance before you choose your investing strategy.

Your action plan is a comprehensive list of the trades you need to make to reallocate your portfolio according to the changes you proposed throughout Scottrade® Portfolio Manager. With your action plan, you can easily take control of your portfolio and make the trades that will align your portfolio with your investment strategy.

The transactions displayed under the Buy Action section of your page make up a list of the investment purchases you would have to make to match the portfolio allocation you created in your Action Plan Model. To completely match the portfolio allocation of your Action Plan Model, you'll also have to execute all the sell transactions displayed under the Sell Action section.

The transactions displayed under the Sell Action section of your page make up a list positions currently in your account that you would have to sell to match the portfolio allocation you created with the My Action Plan Model. To completely match the portfolio allocation of your Action Plan Model, you'll also have to execute all the buy transactions displayed under the Buy Action section.