A method and apparatus for monitoring a items such as stocks and other securities, suitable for use in portable devices, such as personal organizers, wherein instead of separate watch lists, a pool of items being watched is maintained, and the total number of items which can be contained in the pool is intentionally limited to a predefined number, and further wherein each of the items in the pool includes an associated tag which defines a watch list to which it belongs, and the pool of the items being watched can be viewed simultaneously as one coherent collection, or specific watch lists can be displayed.