Be sure you take a long-term view of the stock market. Doing daily portfolio tracking leads to the temptation to make frequent changes in your allocations and this can lead to chasing prior hot performers or emotionally over-reacting to short term market decreases of some of your holdings. Studies have shown that the hottest performers for one period will likely not be the best investment approach for the next period. So tracking your portfolio closely is fine, but be careful about jumping around too much. It is a proven fact that following your short term emotions and making frequent switches in your holdings leads to worse performance than having a allocation strategy and sticking with it even when it does not seem to be working.

On the other hand, we all have an active interest in just how well we are doing with our investments and so we want lots of on-going information about our portfolio. You have numerous options available to you.

1. You can get a very simplified overview of the transactions in your account in terms of the type of transaction (buy or sell), the date and the amount involved. Simply sign onto your account on the www.bestofamerica.com site and then select "Trans History" under the View menu. You will be presented with the transactions for the last 30 days. To see more, complete the beginning and ending date ranges at the bottom of the screen. This will not show any units or unit prices or equivalent shares for the underlying investment option. You can easily get information on the Internet about how the investment options you are using have been performing in general. This is sufficient information for most people, but this is not what we would call "portfolio tracking".