The manual

How the watch works

Everything you need to run Sentryfolio, in plain English. Ten minutes from first login to a fully-armed watch.

Step one

Getting in

The terminal lives at beta.sentryfolio.com and is private: your own account stands at the door. Access is by invitation. You register once with an invitation code, choosing your own email and password.

Tip: let your browser save the password when it offers. The door then opens itself from the phone app too.

One tap from pocket to ledger

Installing the phone app

Sentryfolio installs straight from the browser. No app store, nothing to update, always the live terminal.

Android (Chrome)

  1. Open beta.sentryfolio.com in Chrome and log in.
  2. Tap the ⋮ menu (top right) → Add to Home screen (or Install app if offered).
  3. Tap Add. The gold beacon appears on your home screen.

iPhone (Safari)

  1. Open beta.sentryfolio.com in Safari and log in.
  2. Tap the Share button (the square with the upward arrow).
  3. Scroll down, tap Add to Home Screen, then Add.

From then on it opens full-screen in charcoal and gold, like any app.

Your data, your vault

Importing your holdings

Sentryfolio reads the files your broker already gives you. Export from your broker, drop the file into the terminal, done.

  1. Export from your broker. Look for "Export", "Statement" or "Transaction history", in CSV or Excel format. The fuller the history, the more exact your ledger.
  2. Open Data & sync in the terminal's left rail and drop the file into the upload box.
  3. Read the receipt. The importer reports exactly what it found (holdings, purchase lots, disposals, income) and skips anything it has seen before, so re-uploading is always safe.
Broker not recognised? Every broker formats its files differently, and support is added per broker. If your file isn't understood, send it in via the contact form. The format gets built in, and from then on your uploads just work.
The Sentryfolio Holdings page: every position with cost, value, yield and street context in a dense gold-on-charcoal table.
Holdings after an import: every lot at its true price. Demonstration portfolio, fictional figures.

The tour

Around the terminal

  • Overview: the day's headline numbers. Holdings, cost, value, and anything that needs your eye.
  • Holdings: every position with cost, value, yield and street context. Tick any row for its full price history.
  • Price history: decades-deep charts with your actual purchases marked on them.
  • Signals: the permanent log of every parameter ever met, and where drop thresholds are set.
  • Target watch: the distance between each price and the analysts' mean target, closest first, with your gain and retracement measurements alongside.
  • Allocation: how the whole book splits by account, sector and holding, lot by lot.
  • Income: dividends and interest, month by month, currency-aware.
  • Reports: the value of the whole book over time, and every realised outcome, currency by currency.
  • Discovery: the overnight hunt's findings, with your screening bar on top.
  • Watchlist: everything you've marked Track, ready to pick up again.
  • Data & sync: imports, the manual price-sync button, and ticker triangulation.
The Sentryfolio Overview page with holdings, cost, value and signal tiles.
The Overview, first page of every visit. Demonstration portfolio; every company shown is fictional.

The vocabulary

Signals, explained

Every signal is a measurement: a statement that a number you chose has been reached. None of them is a suggestion. Each fires once, then rests until the mathematics genuinely resets, so a noisy market never becomes a noisy phone.

How a signal works: the price crosses your drop line and the signal fires once; while the price stays below the line it is locked and stays silent; it only re-arms after the price genuinely recovers above the line. your drop line fires once locked while below: no repeats re-arms only after a true recovery
The Sentryfolio Signals page: the permanent log of every parameter ever met, one dated row per measurement.
The Signals log: every measurement, kept forever. Demonstration portfolio, fictional figures.
SignalKindWhat it means
Drop Parameter Met downside A holding closed your chosen percentage below your average cost for it. One baseline per stock, with deeper steps beneath it so a continuing fall is measured in orderly rungs. Your purchase lots stay exact underneath; the average simply follows them.
Street Target Proximity Met upside The price closed within your chosen band (say, 10%) of the analysts' mean target. Their estimate, not guidance; estimates are often wrong.
Street Target Exceeded upside The price closed at or above the mean target itself: the stronger form of the same measurement.
Gain Parameter Met upside One of your lots closed your chosen percentage above its own immutable buy price. Works for every holding, with or without analyst coverage.
Peak Retracement Met upside While above your cost, the price has fallen your chosen percentage back from its own 52-week high. The high-water mark is receding.
Quarantine guard An extreme single-day move suspended automated signals for that holding pending a human look: the guard against data glitches and panic.

Your numbers

Tuning your parameters

Every threshold is yours to set, and each one answers a plain question:

  • Drop parameter (Signals page): "tell me when a holding is this % below my average cost."
  • Target proximity band (Target watch): "tell me when a price is this close to the street's mean target."
  • Gain parameter (Target watch): "tell me when a lot is this % above what I paid."
  • Peak retracement (Target watch): "tell me when a winner has given this much back from its yearly high."

Changes save to the vault instantly and the overnight watch uses them from that night. Signals fire once and lock; they quietly re-arm only after the price moves genuinely away and returns.

While you sleep

The nightly rhythm

  • : the discovery engine walks a global universe of thousands of dividend payers through four mathematical gates, night after night.
  • : the daily sync. Every holding's closing price is gathered, measured against your parameters, and the digest lands in your pocket.
  • : the vault backs itself up to cloud storage. If a backup ever fails, that failure is loudly reported.
The heartbeat rule: the morning digest always arrives, even on a quiet day. A missing digest means the system itself needs attention.

Questions

Fair questions, straight answers

Is this financial advice?
No. Categorically. It never recommends, never suggests amounts, and has no opinion to give. It reports measurements against numbers you chose. What you do about them is entirely your decision.
Where does my data live?
In a private vault on the system's own server, backed up nightly, and every backup is encrypted before it leaves the server, so the backup store only ever holds ciphertext. Your broker files are read for their numbers; no analytics, no third-party tracking, nothing sold, no marketing lists. The privacy notice names every service the system relies on.
What does it cost?
Nothing. Access is by invitation and free while Sentryfolio is in beta. The system is built on a zero-running-cost philosophy (free market data, self-hosted software, no subscriptions), which is what makes that possible.
Which brokers are supported?
Charles Stanley Direct, Trading 212, IG, Interactive Brokers and Revolut today, with new brokers added on request: name your broker and the format gets built in permanently.
Where do the prices and targets come from?
End-of-day prices and analyst figures come from public market data. Analyst targets are third-party estimates, refreshed regularly. Treat them as context, never as truth.
Why did I get no signal today?
Because none of your numbers were met. That is the system working. The morning digest still arrives as a heartbeat, and every past signal stays browsable on the Signals page.