My job is filled with phone and in person meetings in the mornings. I don’t normally get a chance to check online till about 11 am EST. About an hour and half after the US and Canadian market opens. I am also rarely at my desk.

I am more of a long term investor than a short term trader. So I don’t always need real time data during the day. I do however want to be able to receive alerts when specific events I am interested in occur.

I have a BlackBerry device with the ability to download apps disabled. As such I needed to find an easy way to keep track of the state of my stock picks.

One of the tool I am currently using is TMX Money Stock Alerts. I have previously written about the TMX Stock Simulator. You can find the post here: TMX Stock Simulator

Using the TMX Money Stock Alerts, you can pick events for specific stock ticker symbols. When these events occur, you will get an email.

Steps to setup an Alert:

1. This is the homepage : TMX Alerts

2. You can login using one of your existing accounts, or create a username password

3. Once logged in click on Alerts as shown in image 1.

Image 1 – TMX Alerts

4. It will take you to a page that will have a list of existing alerts or be blank the first time you use this feature. Similar to what is shown in image 2.

Image 2 – TMX Alerts

5. Use the Add Alert button shown in image 2 to add a new alert on a specific ticker symbol.

6. When you type in the symbol it should be recognized/auto filled by the site. I have only tried for symbols that trades on the Canadian and US exchange.

7. Once you have entered the symbol, you can pick the type of alert you want to set up. See image 3 for the list of alerts that can be set up.

Image 3 – TMX Alerts

8. The ones that I find useful for me are :

• 52 Week High Alert – This is an indication the stock price has crossed its previous high over the last 52 weeks. I normally have a sell target based on my research so I am not as influenced by the daily market movements. However, this is an interesting indicator that helps me reassess to see if I should take some profit. 
• 52 Week Low Alert – This is an indication the stock price has crossed its previous low over the last 52 weeks. I find this a worrisome indicator, and I normally reevaluate (is the overall market falling or is this something specific to the security that is causing it to drop). 
• News Alert- This will send you an email whenever there is a news article about a specific ticker symbol. I find this helps me track of developments of the company I am interested in. d. End of Day Summary Alert – This emails me a summary at the end of the day. Helpful if I am not near a screen and want to quickly check what happened during the day. 
• Price Change Alert/ Percentage Change Alert – Using these two alerts you can setup to be notified when the price goes up or down by a certain dollar amount or percentage. This can help you go in and sell or buy depending on the movement, or even more automated is to setup to sell and buy automatically when a security reaches a specific price. I wanted some control, so I use this as a trigger to go in to sell and buy. 
• There are a few more alert types. You can set them up depending on how you monitor and what indicators you use to do your sell/buy/reevaluate 

Good luck setting up your automated monitoring! As always feel free to comment if you have any questions.