Many Web sites provide online portfolio tracking services. Some of these serv ices are free, and others are fee-based. The aim of Web-based portfolio man agement tools is to help you make better investment decisions and thus increase your capital gains. Each Web-based portfolio management program offers something different. In the following sections, I describe just a few examples. Don’t let the fascination of having your portfolio online tempt you into over trading (buying or selling) your investments. Investor compilation or super-sites provide, among other things, free and fee-based portfolio tracking. Some investor supersites require your free registra tion and are supported by advertisers. Other compilation sites provide different levels of services, costing up to $8 to $10 per month. The benefit of tracking your portfolio at one of these sites is access to the vast repositories of investor information, data, and tools that they offer. If you want to research or analyze something in connection with your portfolio, you don’t have to go to several investor sites to get the job done, which can save you time and money if you need to make a quick investment decision. In the following sections, I profile several of these investor compilation sites.

B4Utrade offers (among other things) a real-time streaming portfolio tracker that gives you the ability to view your portfolio in the same way as the professionals. All the quotes are updated live without you having to refresh your screen. You can create up to 10 portfolios of 50 stocks each and either watch the expanded quotes or track your gains and losses, all streaming in real time. Monthly subscriptions are $25 (or $250 per year). There is a free 30-day trial.

MSN Money offers two types of portfolio management programs. The basic program doesn’t require a download to get a quick view of your investments. The MSN Money Deluxe program, however, requires you to download a program that includes cus tomizable portfolio management, instant analyses, charts, stock and fund screens, and more. This flexible portfolio tracker can bring together all your personal accounts on one page under one security key. The MSN Money Deluxe Portfolio Manager allows you to

Customize your portfolio view. Choose and arrange columns, sorting the information so that the information that is the most important to you is listed first. Your Deluxe Portfolio Manager page provides quotes, information about insider trading, a current valuation of your portfolio, today’s events, portfolio tracker alerts, valuation ratios, analysts’ rat ings, and technical rankings.

Conduct research and analyses. For example, the portfolio and each stock are rated on a scale of Strong Sell to Strong Buy, based on the rec ommendations of analysts who follow the company. Overand underval uation are based on the price/sales ratio, with individual statistics on different fundamental factors.

Access your credit card, bank, and investment accounts. You can view the history of your transactions for up to 90 days. Assign categories to your transactions and then use the MSN Financial Tools to look at how you’re spending your money. If you want, you can even create a budget. In the Investment Accounts section of the program, you find the follow ing: current quotes, dollar and percentage changes on your account values, alerts, and news on your holdings. The MSN Money Web site also provides a listing of financial institutions that can provide MSN Money with your account balances and other account details. To sign up for this expanded service, go to the My Accounts section of MSN Money and follow the easy-to-understand instructions. The process takes about 10 minutes, requires a Microsoft password account (you can get one while signing up), and the information you use to sign in to your financial institution’s Web site. (In the later section “Personal finance software pro grams,” you see how you can combine this feature with your MS Money per sonal finance software program.)

Reuters offers a reliable portfolio tracker and Watchlist tool with your free registration. Enter your portfolio data (ticker symbol, price, number of shares purchased, and commissions). Analyze your portfo lio by selecting from the viewpoint of performance, valuation, fundamentals, and today’s action. The color-coded performance view is an immediate eye-opener about the health of your portfolio. One of the great advantages of the Reuters Portfolio Tracker is the ability to click a stock’s ticker symbol and view the financial institution quality company research, stock information, news, and charts. At the home page, click Investing, then look in the left margin.

StockSelector, in my opinion, lets you view your portfolio “every which way for Sunday.” You can look at today’s change, port folio value, today’s news, today’s discussion, earnings summary, analyst sum mary, valuation summary, technical summary, fundamentals, and so on. Additionally, you can see how capital gains can impact your profits. The port folio tracker is free with your online registration.

The Wall Street Journal offers easy access to your portfolio. Click the top-right corner of almost any page of the Interactive Edition to access the portfolio program. You can establish five portfolios with as many as 30 securities in each one. Delayed stock prices constantly update the portfolio, which also shows percentage change and gain/loss information.

The grid displays an issue-by-issue breakdown of your investments. Total value (along with your portfolio’s current gain/loss and percentage of change) is included at the top of the grid, along with the current value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. You can download investment information to your favorite spreadsheet program.

If news is available for any company in your portfolio, a flag appears next to the company’s name. To access the news, click the flag. Links to detailed quotes and mutual fund snapshots are also