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Over the last few weeks, we have seen multiple instances of sharp moves across markets.
Sometimes it is metals reacting to macro data. Sometimes it is memory and semiconductor stocks responding to earnings commentary, supply updates, or AI-related demand signals.
And to be honest, these are not new situations. This pattern of sudden movements across stocks and ETFs repeats itself across market cycles.
The information itself is never hard to find. Prices move in real time. News is available instantly. The challenge is almost always timing with respect to taking a position.
The US markets close at 2:30 AM IST. By the time most of us check the app the next morning, the move has already happened and settled into the price. It is not that we missed the news. We just became aware of it later than the market did.
This is something most Indian investors tracking global markets have experienced repeatedly.
Why does this become harder as portfolios grow
Tracking one or two stocks manually is manageable. Tracking a growing watchlist across stocks and ETFs is not.
As portfolios grow bigger and more diversified, the number of things worth tracking increases. Prices move, macro news breaks, and company updates come in. Constantly monitoring markets, especially late in the evening or overnight, is not practical.
What tends to happen for most investors is that we check markets when we get time. When markets move at odd hours, this often means noticing the move a little later.
Over time, this creates a recurring gap. Not because of lack of intent, but because attention does not scale the same way portfolios do.
A priority that kept coming up internally
This problem was not new to us either.
As we discussed our product priorities through 2025, this kept coming up in different forms. How do we help investors stay aware of what matters without expecting them to constantly track markets? How do we reduce the gap between when something happens and when a user becomes aware of it?
This became a core problem to solve, not as a one-off feature, but as part of how the platform is built for global investing from India.
Alerts are one of the outcomes of that work, and it is now rolling out as one of our major releases for 2026.
What Alerts are designed to do
Instead of watching markets continuously, you can set conditions that matter to you and move on with your day. A price level you care about. A percentage move. An important company update or a macro event that impacts U.S. markets.
When that condition is met, you get notified.
That is all Alerts are meant to do.
Essentially, Alerts are designed to help you stay informed at the right time, without needing to keep checking prices.
With Alerts, you can:
- Track price movements that matter to you
- Get notified about important company and macro news
- React when it makes sense, not hours later
Building on something that already worked
Last year, we introduced Market Open alerts. It was a simple reminder that U.S. markets had opened for the day.
Over time, it became one of the most clicked notifications on Vested. What stood out was not the feature itself, but the behaviour. Investors appreciated being nudged at the right moment, without needing to remember market timings across time zones.
Alerts build on that same thinking.
Instead of just knowing when markets open, you can now customize what you want to be notified about, based on your own portfolio and watchlist.
How Alerts work on Vested
You can set Alerts directly from stock and ETF pages or from your watchlist. It takes just a tap to configure.
There are two types of alerts available today:
- Price alerts, based on price levels or percentage changes
- News and key event alerts, covering company-specific updates and macro developments that impact U.S. markets. For example, getting notified when something in the industry is announced or when management announces something company-specific.
Once an alert condition is met, you receive a push notification. You can also view your alert history inside the app, so you have context on what triggered and when.
Basic users can maintain active alerts for up to 10 tickers. Premium users can maintain alerts for more than 100 stocks and ETFs, which becomes increasingly useful as portfolios diversify.
Keeping monitoring and execution in one place
Alerts are not new as a concept. Many investors already use external apps to track prices and news.
But if you already use Vested to track global stocks and execute trades, it felt important to bring monitoring and action into the same place.
I hope Alerts make it easier to stay aware of what matters in your portfolio, even when markets move at times when you are not actively watching them.