I’ve been a big fan of Mint.com ever since I first heard of it. They’ve been in the news lately since they’ve announced that they are being purchased by Intuit for $170 million dollars. While many people have congratulated them on creating a great product and now reap the financial benefits of it. Others have thought it would have been better for them to continue independently and continue to drive innovation in their product. Regardless of how you feel about their corporate situation, very few people are critical of the product that Mint has put together since they started up.

In the short amount of time since they launched, they’ve added a lot of features that customers have asked for on their forums, one of which being investment tracking. For obvious reasons, this was something I really wanted to see them add, but when they did I was somewhat underwhelmed. And now that I have re-visited the tool, I think I know why. One of the things that makes Mint so great is its vast amount of data that they have. And when the investment tracking first launched, they have very little data. Fast forward a year, and they now have much more of both my data, and everyone else’s (anonymous) data.

For instance, take a look at the chat below to see how my IRA is doing compared to the S&P 500 over the past 6 months.

It’s not surprise to see that the portfolio is up over the last 6 months, since the stock market as a whole has made a huge run since bottoming in March. But what’s nice about this chart is how they visualize the relative performance to the benchmark index in green and red.

As I clicked around the tool, I discovered some areas that could use some improvement. One in particular is the “allocation” pie chart. As you can see below, in my 401(k) I have 100% mutual funds. That’s probably the same as 90% of the people in the U.S., but what’s in those mutual funds is what would be more interesting.

Let’s compare that with what Fidelity shows with the same info on my 401(k).

The value section is a simple look at how much a particular account is worth over time. Ideally it looks something like this one below:

As with the rest of the Mint site, the investment section is full of offers from different brokerage sites to create an account and save money via reduced commissions and fees. What is lacking is the comparison with the rest of the Mint community. Just like I enjoy seeing that I spend less on groceries than the average person in San Jose, I’d like to see how my investment performance compares with other people around here. Maybe that’s something that is on the way.

Summary: The Mint investment section is now up to speed with the rest of the site. If you tried it and haven’t been looking at it lately, give it another chance. Take a look at how things are doing now that Mint has collected more data about your investments. Much like the rest of the site, it gives you a good view of what your money is doing, and how it compares to the major indexes.

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