Watchlist as a Research Dashboard

1. Why a Watchlist Needs More Than Just Price

Most stock watchlists do one thing: show you the current price and how much it has moved. This is useful for traders who are focused on entry timing. But for investors tracking fundamentals, it is almost useless.

When you are evaluating whether DMART deserves a place alongside ITC in your portfolio, or whether you should add more HDFC Bank relative to Kotak, you need to compare P/E ratios, return on equity, debt levels, operating margins, and promoter confidence — side by side, in a single view.

This is what the Watchlist tab in Finmagine Portfolio Manager is designed for. Instead of a price ticker, it is a fundamental comparison table that shows 23 data points per stock, all pulled from Screener.in and cached for 90 days so the extension stays fast.

You can add any NSE-listed stock to the watchlist manually. Any stock you already hold in your portfolio is automatically included with a HOLD badge — so you can compare potential new additions directly against what you already own.

2. Holdings Auto-Included — The HOLD Badge

When you open the Watchlist tab, your current Holdings from all Indian asset classes (IN_EQ and IN_MF) are automatically added to the top of the list. These rows carry a HOLD badge in the Stock column so you can always tell which stocks you already own.

This matters for comparison. If you are considering buying TITAN and you already hold ITC and DMART, you want to see all three in the same table and ask: where is the quality highest? Where is the valuation most attractive?

The non-HOLD stocks are ones you have added manually by typing an NSE ticker in the Watchlist tab's add bar. These are your research candidates — stocks you are studying but do not yet own.

3. The 23 Columns Explained

Each row in the Watchlist table contains 23 columns. Here is a complete reference, grouped by category:

Group 1: Identity & Price

Column	What It Shows	Source
Stock	NSE ticker + HOLD badge if in portfolio	Stored locally
LTP	Last traded price (live via Yahoo Finance)	Yahoo Finance
Score	Finmagine composite score (0–100)	Computed from fundamentals
Signals	5 ChartInk momentum signals (Stage 2, Near High, High Volume, VCP, IPO)	ChartInk (cached)

Group 2: Valuation Ratios

Column	What It Shows	Why It Matters
PEG	Price/Earnings-to-Growth ratio	Valuation relative to growth; PEG < 1 = potentially cheap
P/E	Price to Earnings (TTM)	Core valuation multiple; compare within sector
P/B	Price to Book value	Asset-heavy sectors; key for banks and NBFCs
P/S	Price to Sales (TTM revenue)	Useful when earnings are low or negative
EV/E	EV/EBITDA	Capital-structure-neutral valuation; good for debt-heavy companies

Group 3: Profitability & Returns

Column	What It Shows	Why It Matters
ROCE	Return on Capital Employed (%)	How efficiently total capital generates profit; >15% is good
ROE	Return on Equity (%)	Return on shareholder capital; >15% preferred
OPM%	Operating Profit Margin	Core business profitability; compare across peers
NPM%	Net Profit Margin	Bottom-line efficiency after all costs and taxes

Group 4: Financial Health

Column	What It Shows	Why It Matters
D/E	Debt to Equity ratio	Leverage; < 1 preferred for non-financials
CurR	Current Ratio	Short-term liquidity; > 1.5 is comfortable
IntCov	Interest Coverage ratio	How many times EBIT covers interest; > 3 is safe
FCF	Free Cash Flow (latest annual, ₹ Cr)	Cash after capex; positive FCF = self-funding business

Group 5: Growth Rates

Column	What It Shows	Why It Matters
Sales%	3-year revenue CAGR (%)	Top-line momentum
EPS%	3-year EPS CAGR (%)	Earnings growth quality

Group 6: Ownership Quality

Column	What It Shows	Why It Matters
Pledg%	Promoter shares pledged (%)	> 20% is a red flag; pledging signals cash stress
Prom%	Promoter holding (%)	Skin in the game; watch for consistent reduction
FII%	Foreign Institutional Investor holding (%)	Institutional confidence in the business
✕	Remove from watchlist button	Deletes manually-added rows (HOLD rows cannot be deleted here)

4. Colour-Coding: Green / Amber / Red Thresholds

Having 23 numbers per stock is only useful if you can read them quickly. The Watchlist tab applies colour-coded backgrounds to each cell based on predefined thresholds:

• Green — the metric is in a healthy range (e.g. ROCE > 15%, D/E < 0.5)
• Amber — the metric is marginal (e.g. ROCE 10–15%, D/E 0.5–1.0)
• Red — the metric is concerning (e.g. ROCE < 10%, Pledg% > 20%)

This means you can scan the entire table visually and immediately spot which stocks have a row of mostly green (strong fundamentals) vs a row with several red cells (structural weaknesses).

Sample Watchlist View

Here is how a 5-stock watchlist might look after fetching fundamentals:

* DMART / ADANIENT / PAGEIND rows show LTP as — because they are watchlist-only (not held); P/B and P/S also show — for these rows.

Looking at this table, ADANIENT immediately stands out with red D/E, red FCF, and amber ROCE — despite strong revenue and EPS growth. PAGEIND has outstanding ROCE/ROE but expensive valuation multiples. TITAN has red valuation but green quality everywhere. This is the kind of instant multi-dimensional comparison the Watchlist is designed for.

5. Sorting and Ranking Your Shortlist

Every column header in the Watchlist table is clickable — clicking it sorts the entire table by that column (ascending on first click, descending on second click). This turns the watchlist into a dynamic screener.

Practical Sort Strategies

Sort by ROCE (descending) — Find the Best Capital Allocators

Click ROCE and sort high-to-low. This surfaces companies that generate the most profit per unit of capital deployed. When ROCE consistently exceeds cost of capital, the business compounds shareholder value over time.

Sort by D/E (ascending) — Find the Financially Strongest

Sort D/E low-to-high to find companies with the least leverage. In a rising interest rate environment, these businesses are most insulated from financial stress.

Sort by EPS% (descending) — Find the Fastest-Growing

Sort by 3-year EPS CAGR to see which companies have grown profits fastest. Compare this with their P/E to see if the growth rate justifies the valuation.

Sort by Pledg% (descending) — Spot the Red Flags

Sort pledging high-to-low to immediately see which promoters have pledged significant shareholding. Any company with Pledg% above 30% warrants deeper investigation before investing.

6. Lazy Loading and the 90-Day Cache

Fetching 23 fundamental data points for each stock requires loading the full Screener.in page for that stock. If you had 15 stocks in your watchlist, that would mean 15 network requests every time you opened the extension — slow, and potentially throttled by Screener.

The Watchlist tab solves this with two mechanisms: lazy loading and long-duration caching.

Lazy Loading

When you open the Watchlist tab, the table renders immediately with whatever cached data is available. Stocks that have no cached data yet show a loading spinner in their row. The extension fetches their Screener.in data in the background, one by one, and fills in the cells as each fetch completes.

You do not need to wait for all stocks to load before you can see the ones that are already cached.

90-Day Fundamental Cache

Once a stock's fundamentals are fetched, they are stored in chrome.storage.local with a 90-day expiry timestamp. Most financial ratios — ROCE, ROE, margins, D/E — are reported quarterly or annually and do not change significantly day-to-day. A 90-day cache is a sensible balance between freshness and performance.

The Refresh Button

The Watchlist tab has a ⟳ refresh button. Clicking it triggers a fresh Screener.in fetch for all watchlist stocks regardless of cache age. Use this after a quarterly result season to pick up updated margins, ROCE, and EPS growth figures.

7. A Practical Watchlist Workflow

Here is how to integrate the Watchlist tab into a weekly or monthly research routine:

Step 1: Build Your Initial Shortlist

Identify 10–15 companies that appear in screens you trust — Finmagine Rankings, Screener screeners, or analyst recommendations. Add their NSE tickers to the Watchlist. Your Holdings are already there automatically with HOLD badges.

Step 2: Let It Load (Once)

The first time you open the Watchlist after adding stocks, it fetches fundamentals from Screener.in. This takes 20–30 seconds depending on the number of stocks and your internet speed. After that, it uses the 90-day cache, so subsequent opens are instant.

Step 3: Sort and Identify Candidates

Sort by ROCE descending. Note the top 5. Sort by D/E ascending. Note which stocks appear in both lists. These are your highest-quality businesses with the strongest balance sheets — the best long-term candidates.

Step 4: Compare Valuations

For your quality candidates, look at P/E and PEG. Is the current price justified by growth? Sort by EPS% descending and check whether the P/E is proportionate to that growth rate.

Step 5: Check for Red Flags

Sort by Pledg% descending and D/E descending. Any company with both high pledging and high debt warrants removal from your shortlist unless you have a specific thesis.

Step 6: Make the Decision

Your shortlist should now have 3–5 stocks that score well across ROCE, ROE, margins, debt, and have acceptable valuations. Check their Holdings tab entries (if you own any) — are they in the Alloted or Add More tabs? Use those signals alongside the Watchlist comparison to make your final call.

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