1. How to create a manual stock portfolio

With Aikido Finance, you can create a quantitative portfolio in minutes.

In this article, we will look at how to build a ‘manual’ stock portfolio. This means that you pick a strategy, build a tracker portfolio and follow along in whichever broker you like.

This method is suitable for all Basic Aikido users, and for Premium Aikido users who are not connected with Interactive Brokers.

Log in or Launch App to go to your personal dashboard and browse the catalogue of stock strategies.

You might search for a trading strategy that suits your risk tolerance, appetite for returns, or recent performance and can sort the strategies by risk, return or Sharpe (learn how to create a risk budget here).

There is also the option to filter by criteria such as value, dividend and quality or filter by rebalancing period.

Note: There may not always be a Basic strategy that fills the criteria of multiple filters.

Choose a strategy from the large list of Aikido pre-built quantitative strategies catalogue

In this example, we want to find a strategy which contains the stocks of companies with a mid to large market cap, nice earnings and trade with a slight discount and choose Aikido's "Deep Quality" strategy.

We choose the Aikido Deep Quality strategy and click to Create Portfolio

Click on your selected strategy or on 'create portfolio' to start Portfolio Creation. When offered the choice between manual and automated, click Manual.

Note: Automated portfolio creation is available to Premium Aikido users only. It currently allows you to connect to an Interactive Brokers account.

Only Premium Aikido users who have connected their IBKR account will have unlocked the Automated option

Name your new portfolio whatever you like, or use one of our pre-populated auto-generated names.

Create a name of your choosing for your portfolio.

Select any optional add-ons that may be available at this time.

Choose your base currency and decide the amount you want to invest.

The amount you decide to invest is equally weighted over each holding in the portfolio.

Currently Aikido offers US-only stocks (global stocks coming soon), so the conversion value from your currency to USD($) is shown below the amount you input.

Enter the amount of cash you want allocated to the portfolio, USD currency is preferred.

In front of you are the stocks which the algorithm has generated; depending on the strategy there will be between 10-25 stocks in the list. You will see the number of shares to purchase for each stock in the list.

You are presented with the stocks to invest in for your quantitative strategy. Click "Buy All" to execute.

Go to your online broker and work your way through the list of stocks, purchasing each as shown.

For example:

First, purchase 37 shares of Permian Basin via your broker.

You may use a market order or a limit order to buy the stock. A market order should execute instantaneously (using the market’s best price), whereas a limit order could take some time to execute (you decide the price). Most people building an Aikido portfolio will choose to use a market order.

Whatever price you paid for the stock, enter that into the “Share Price” input in Aikido and click the green tick/check button.

If the stock market is closed when you’re building the portfolio, you may not know the exact price which you paid for the stock. If that is the case, take your best guess, or leave the default price – you can always edit the transaction price afterwards.

If you cannot find the stock in your broker or don’t want to purchase a stock for whatever reason, click the red X button and the algorithm will give you a brand new stock!

Note: Aikido does not endorse or recommend any individual stock shown in the lists, the stocks are purely generated by the algorithm.

Next comes the confirmation page which confirms your list of stocks.

Click "Next" to be taken to final confirmation page.

Once you have pressed 'confirm portfolio' the completed portfolio will be added to your Aikido profile. Take note of your rebalance date, then sit back and relax.

You are presented with the last confirmation page, click "Confirm Portfolio" to finish.

Congratulations! You have successfully created your first portfolio.