How do you track your portfolio's performance?

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Wade Garrett
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How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Wade Garrett »

My portfolio consists of a mutual fund account (Vanguard) and a separate brokerage account (Fidelity). I own double digit funds (yes I’m a slicer/dicer) between the two accounts. I’m trying to determine the best/easiest/safest way to track my portfolio’s performance.

I know about Personal Capital, Mint, Morningstar, etc. But I’ve never felt comfortable using them because my understanding is you have to hand over all of your account info and link your funds (including passwords, etc) for them to work. The idea of having all of this sensitive information stored in one place scares me. Part of the reason I have separate Vanguard and Fidelity accounts is because I don’t want my entire portfolio at one institution.

I’m guessing there’s a way to track it in Excel, but setting it all up and doing things like accounting for reinvested dividends, etc. greatly exceeds my Excel knowledge.

Am I being too cautious for not wanting to hand over passwords to Personal Capital, Mint, etc? Is there another easy/safe way aside from those sites and being an Excel expert that I’m not thinking of?
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student
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by student »

Both Vanguard and Fidelity let you track your portfolio by adding outside accounts. You can do it manually if you like. Since you only have accounts at Vanguard and Fidelity, I suggest that you pick one, say Fidelity, and manually add the account from Vanguard to it for tracking purpose.
soboggled
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by soboggled »

The funds track it for you. What are you trying to accomplish? If you don't like how they present the info or want to consolidate all assets, build a simple spreadsheet based on what you want to see and update it monthly (at most) from their reports.
mhalley
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by mhalley »

Or you could pay to install quicken on your PC. I use all of the above aggregators and don't worry about being hacked.
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Taylor Larimore
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Taylor Larimore »

How do you track your portfolio's performance?
Wade:

I have everything at Vanguard (and my bank account). I look at my two balances once or twice a year to detect mistakes or fraud.

I don't bother figuring annualized return. We get what the markets give.

I know my index funds are outperforming most investors which is good enough for me.

Best wishes.
Taylor
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jackholloway
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by jackholloway »

I use a google spreadsheet where I manually update number of shared post dividend, and it looks up price per share and totals it. I also manually tagged retirement, college, and taxable, and US stocks, intl stocks, bonds, and cash so I know whether I am still at 55/10/35. This is a disincentive to add new funds, because it takes a few minutes to do it, which is just enough pain to not do it casually, but no big deal when the 401k changes. It also is my tool for detecting rebalancing needs, but that is not automatic.

I also have a google apps script that created a frozen summary in doc form on Drive; I run it manually about once a month post dividend capture.

It tracks progress towards my number, and has a best guess as to when I will hit it. I do not separate traditional and Roth accounts in that calculation, and assume around 4% real in that calc.
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Toons
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Toons »

I use Quicken to track performance.
I rarely look at performance though.
My asset allocation is in place.
I accept what returns I receive.
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dbr
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by dbr »

Excel does everything I need. That does not amount to much. At one time I had a process to compute IRR for the portfolio and for assets in the portfolio, but it didn't take long before I lost interest.
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6miths
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by 6miths »

Taylor Larimore wrote:
How do you track your portfolio's performance?
Wade:

I have everything at Vanguard (and my bank account). I look at my two balances once or twice a year to detect mistakes or fraud.

I don't bother figuring annualized return. We get what the markets give.

I know my index funds are outperforming most investors which is good enough for me.

Best wishes.
Taylor
+1

It is what it is! Just look to rebalance once a year or so if strays outside desired asset allocation. Try to use the KISS principle. What am I going to do if I don't like the performance? Alter my withdrawal rate and maybe get some volunteer work that pays....
'It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so!' Mark Twain
TravelforFun
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by TravelforFun »

Wade Garrett wrote:I’m guessing there’s a way to track it in Excel, but setting it all up and doing things like accounting for reinvested dividends, etc. greatly exceeds my Excel knowledge.
I set up an excel spreadsheet with several tabs to enable me to track my individual investment returns and my total portfolio annualized increases (or decreases). Everybody's situation is different so you would have to set up your spreadsheet to tailor to your needs. Not very hard if you're familiar with some basic formulas.
red5
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by red5 »

I like numbers and "playing" with them. I use Excel. I am also a very passive investor.
leonard
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by leonard »

I don't track the return on my portfolio. It's not an actionable number.
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oldcomputerguy
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by oldcomputerguy »

I also have some assets both at Fidelity and Vanguard. I have a simple spreadsheet that I built that can give me a quick picture so that I know whether or not I have exceeded a rebalance threshold. I go in every so often and update the numbers of shares of each holding, the spreadsheet then pulls current share prices from Yahoo Finance and gives me numerical results.

Fidelity offers the ability to connect to your Vanguard account and pull the info from there, and present you with a combined picture. The Fidelity service, however, is similar to any other aggregator, about which you've expressed discomfort, so it may not be to your liking. Alternatively, one can go to Vanguard and set up the Fidelity holdings as an "external account", but you have to maintain numbers of shares there manually. But you don't have to enter any Fidelity credentials to do this, so this may be more to your liking.
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student
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by student »

smartinwate wrote:I also have some assets both at Fidelity and Vanguard. I have a simple spreadsheet that I built that can give me a quick picture so that I know whether or not I have exceeded a rebalance threshold. I go in every so often and update the numbers of shares of each holding, the spreadsheet then pulls current share prices from Yahoo Finance and gives me numerical results.

Fidelity offers the ability to connect to your Vanguard account and pull the info from there, and present you with a combined picture. The Fidelity service, however, is similar to any other aggregator, about which you've expressed discomfort, so it may not be to your liking. Alternatively, one can go to Vanguard and set up the Fidelity holdings as an "external account", but you have to maintain numbers of shares there manually. But you don't have to enter any Fidelity credentials to do this, so this may be more to your liking.
Fidelity also allows you to add external account manually. Its portfolio analysis is very good and it will generate a report for you. In addition, it can also do retirement analysis with Monte Carlo simulation. Of course, at Vanguard, one can use Financial Engine if one meets the minimum requirement for free access.
grettman
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by grettman »

Like others have posted... I accept the results of the market. Since I run a lazy portfolio I don't see why I need to track its performance.

I do, however, track my savings performance. My spending levels is something I have relatively complete control over so that matters most to me.

I do like to track my net worth and I do that by logging into all my accounts on the first day of the month to capture the ending balances of the previous month. Similar to Larry, but much more frequently, I do this partly because I want to make sure things are on the up and up.
DetroitRick
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by DetroitRick »

I use 3 tools - Quicken, Excel and Schwab's Portfolio Performance functionality.

Not something I have to do, but something that I view as enjoyable personal learning tools. And a personal report card. Quicken and Schwab involve virtually no cost of my time (except in studying the results, of course), but they give me a chance to evaluate my own decisions and to increase my own understanding of the market. This has been especially true as my asset allocation has adjusted with my age. So these tools have given me the confidence I need to avoid the noise. And pointed me in the general direction of the Boglehead approach for retirement accounts (we won't mention my stock portfolio in that regard :happy ).
MI_bogle
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by MI_bogle »

grettman wrote:Like others have posted... I accept the results of the market. Since I run a lazy portfolio I don't see why I need to track its performance.

I do, however, track my savings performance. My spending levels is something I have relatively complete control over so that matters most to me.

I do like to track my net worth and I do that by logging into all my accounts on the first day of the month to capture the ending balances of the previous month. Similar to Larry, but much more frequently, I do this partly because I want to make sure things are on the up and up.
+1

I focus mostly on savings rate because that's what I can control. I expect that as I get closer to retirement, I will focus slightly less on savings rate and slightly more on investments (more on the risk and asset allocation side obviously, rather than return)
LateStarter1975
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by LateStarter1975 »

Taylor Larimore wrote:
How do you track your portfolio's performance?
Wade:

I have everything at Vanguard (and my bank account). I look at my two balances once or twice a year to detect mistakes or fraud.

I don't bother figuring annualized return. We get what the markets give.

I know my index funds are outperforming most investors which is good enough for me.

Best wishes.
Taylor
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LateStarter1975
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by LateStarter1975 »

leonard wrote:I don't track the return on my portfolio. It's not an actionable number.
+1
For people who use only index funds which should capture the market's performance, what exactly do you do if you track your performance, besides rebalancing?
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dbr
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by dbr »

LateStarter1975 wrote:
leonard wrote:I don't track the return on my portfolio. It's not an actionable number.
+1
For people who use only index funds which should capture the market's performance, what exactly do you do if you track your performance, besides rebalancing?
You don't capture the market's performance if you are contributing or withdrawing money because you have different amounts invested over time. To track the performance of your portfolio you have to account for that by running an internal rate of return on your specific holdings, inputs, and outputs.

But, as you say, this is still a quibble as one has to decide what would be actionable about the correct result if one did calculate it.
Engineer250
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Engineer250 »

grettman wrote:Like others have posted... I accept the results of the market. Since I run a lazy portfolio I don't see why I need to track its performance.

I do, however, track my savings performance. My spending levels is something I have relatively complete control over so that matters most to me.

I do like to track my net worth and I do that by logging into all my accounts on the first day of the month to capture the ending balances of the previous month. Similar to Larry, but much more frequently, I do this partly because I want to make sure things are on the up and up.
Same. I pay a lot of attention to my budget and my savings rate.

I do punch numbers into excel and have something set up with Personal Capital, but that's more about getting my asset allocation correct (I made some decisions to go more international and slightly increase my non-equity, I didn't want to do all that right away so these tools let me see my overall progress, since it's my new contributions that are affecting it). If I had a nice 3 Fund portfolio this would be super easy and I'd barely have to check it. Unfortunately TSP's I Fund means I keep some international small cap and emerging markets around. But it's still relatively easy. I don't track share prices, just punch in the new balances and see how close I am to desired asset allocation. Generally make no changes, just make sure I am going in the direction I want to.
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staythecourse
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by staythecourse »

I do mine old school. I take out my legal pad and draw rows and columns. Log into each account and document the value at the end of every month. Pull out calculator and there we go.

Now the ONLY reason I do this is not to check for performance, but to figure out which laggards in my asset allocation to deploy new monies each month. I am more interested in mantaining my asset allocation then anything else. I already did the upfornt work in choosing funds that are low cost, tax efficient, liquid, and minimize alpha. It is also a great way to make sure I am doing a good job of saving. If I don't save x amount for investing above the usual for 40lks then I look closer to see if spending is going up. If not, then spend away!!

Good luck.
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dbr
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by dbr »

I do have a table in an Excel file that tells me my asset allocation and whether or not I have exceeded any rebalancing bands. That happens very seldom. I also have a table that shows if I have any tax lots showing a loss in case I might want to tax loss harvest. That isn't happening either since 2008.
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goingup
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by goingup »

student wrote:Both Vanguard and Fidelity let you track your portfolio by adding outside accounts. You can do it manually if you like. Since you only have accounts at Vanguard and Fidelity, I suggest that you pick one, say Fidelity, and manually add the account from Vanguard to it for tracking purpose.
I think this is a good answer, especially if you have security concerns and aren't a spreadsheet geek.
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by livesoft »

Wade Garrett wrote:I’m guessing there’s a way to track it in Excel, but setting it all up and doing things like accounting for reinvested dividends, etc. greatly exceeds my Excel knowledge.
If you have a computer that runs Microsoft Windows, then you can try out the free (FREE!) downloadable Microsoft Money that tracks your portfolio if you enter all your positions and also your transactions. You don't need to send passwords and login credentials to anyone and you don't need to share those juicy bits. You don't need to know Excel at all. BUT …

… you need to manually enter your transactions into the no-longer-supported program. And you need to look-up and enter the current NAVs and prices of your investments. The positive outcome of this manual data entry is that it nudges you to have fewer positions and make fewer transactions. That's a good thing.

Data entry should not be onerous nor a problem because most of your accounts probably do not have transactions except once of month or once a quarter or once a year.

And this is actionable. You will find that places like Fidelity, Vanguard, and others do not always track things without mistakes.
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by sunnywindy »

I know about Personal Capital, Mint, Morningstar, etc. But I’ve never felt comfortable using them because my understanding is you have to hand over all of your account info and link your funds (including passwords, etc) for them to work.


Morningstar's "Portfolio" doesn't use account info (you can't electronically link an account), thus there isn't any danger from cyber-criminals. I think it is the best tracker, but it does require some work to set up.
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by leonard »

dbr wrote:
LateStarter1975 wrote:
leonard wrote:I don't track the return on my portfolio. It's not an actionable number.
+1
For people who use only index funds which should capture the market's performance, what exactly do you do if you track your performance, besides rebalancing?
You don't capture the market's performance if you are contributing or withdrawing money because you have different amounts invested over time. To track the performance of your portfolio you have to account for that by running an internal rate of return on your specific holdings, inputs, and outputs.

But, as you say, this is still a quibble as one has to decide what would be actionable about the correct result if one did calculate it.
Assuming no tracking error - one is still capturing the market return for the period they held the security. So, inputs and outputs do not impact whether one achieves the market rate of return. Said another way - the portfolio doesn't necessary get the market rate of return - but the constituent index funds do get their respective benchmark market's rate of return - over the time they are held.

But, taking all that in to account, as you said, if the IRR is 7.1256% or 2.358% or whatever - there isn't any action I need to take based on that.
Leonard | | Market Timing: Do you seriously think you can predict the future? What else do the voices tell you? | | If employees weren't taking jobs with bad 401k's, bad 401k's wouldn't exist.
dbr
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by dbr »

leonard wrote:
dbr wrote:
LateStarter1975 wrote:
leonard wrote:I don't track the return on my portfolio. It's not an actionable number.
+1
For people who use only index funds which should capture the market's performance, what exactly do you do if you track your performance, besides rebalancing?
You don't capture the market's performance if you are contributing or withdrawing money because you have different amounts invested over time. To track the performance of your portfolio you have to account for that by running an internal rate of return on your specific holdings, inputs, and outputs.

But, as you say, this is still a quibble as one has to decide what would be actionable about the correct result if one did calculate it.
Assuming no tracking error - one is still capturing the market return for the period they held the security. So, inputs and outputs do not impact whether one achieves the market rate of return. Said another way - the portfolio doesn't necessary get the market rate of return - but the constituent index funds do get their respective benchmark market's rate of return - over the time they are held.

But, taking all that in to account, as you said, if the IRR is 7.1256% or 2.358% or whatever - there isn't any action I need to take based on that.
Totally in agreement. I learned all about IRR when I thought I should keep track of things and then deleted all of it when I learned there was nothing there to see.
leonard
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by leonard »

dbr wrote:
leonard wrote:
dbr wrote:
LateStarter1975 wrote:
leonard wrote:I don't track the return on my portfolio. It's not an actionable number.
+1
For people who use only index funds which should capture the market's performance, what exactly do you do if you track your performance, besides rebalancing?
You don't capture the market's performance if you are contributing or withdrawing money because you have different amounts invested over time. To track the performance of your portfolio you have to account for that by running an internal rate of return on your specific holdings, inputs, and outputs.

But, as you say, this is still a quibble as one has to decide what would be actionable about the correct result if one did calculate it.
Assuming no tracking error - one is still capturing the market return for the period they held the security. So, inputs and outputs do not impact whether one achieves the market rate of return. Said another way - the portfolio doesn't necessary get the market rate of return - but the constituent index funds do get their respective benchmark market's rate of return - over the time they are held.

But, taking all that in to account, as you said, if the IRR is 7.1256% or 2.358% or whatever - there isn't any action I need to take based on that.
Totally in agreement. I learned all about IRR when I thought I should keep track of things and then deleted all of it when I learned there was nothing there to see.
Yes. Tracking is tough. There's no simple way in a VG transaction report (or others for that matter) to differentiate contributions/withdrawals from interest/dividends. So, that usually has to be manually tracked laboriously. With no real benefit in the ending IRR.
Leonard | | Market Timing: Do you seriously think you can predict the future? What else do the voices tell you? | | If employees weren't taking jobs with bad 401k's, bad 401k's wouldn't exist.
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Earl Lemongrab
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Earl Lemongrab »

Taylor Larimore wrote:I have everything at Vanguard (and my bank account). I look at my two balances once or twice a year to detect mistakes or fraud.
This is poor advice in my opinion. You need to check for fraud much more often. I believe banks generally only allow 60 days after a fraudulent transaction, and brokerage accounts might be similar. You might find yourself out of luck.

I recommend all financial accounts, including bank, brokerage, and credit cards be reviewed (not just a balance check) once a month to look for fraud. It just takes minutes and can save a lot of time and money.

Earl
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LAlearning
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by LAlearning »

i dont get it...each company will track your assets there....
so you dont need to do anything but add and subtract from each site...
I know nothing!
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mgullo
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by mgullo »

Taylor Larimore wrote:
How do you track your portfolio's performance?
Wade:

I have everything at Vanguard (and my bank account). I look at my two balances once or twice a year to detect mistakes or fraud.

I don't bother figuring annualized return. We get what the markets give.

I know my index funds are outperforming most investors which is good enough for me.

Best wishes.
Taylor
I basically do the same, but I check it more than twice a year. I check to make sure my 403(b) contributions are happening, increases take place as scheduled, and the Roth/TIRA contributions go through. Everything is in an index fund and keeping the accounts with one provider simplifies the process and I am happy with that.
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Nearly A Moose
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Nearly A Moose »

I like metrics and spreadsheets, so I run a few. There is a great multi-account internal rage of return spreadsheet for download from the wiki. You can find it under a page called tracking investments or something like that. (I'm too lazy to get it on my phone...) I doesn't take long to set up, and it's nice if you like getting numbers just because. I don't have plans to act on the IRR number; I just find it fun to know.

I also have an Excel net worth tracker that I update quarterly.

But I also run both Mint and Personal Capital, and since I'm a Mac user I'm experimenting with Banktivity as well (would just do Quicken if I were a PC user). So, I haven't necessarily identified a fully "off the grid" method.
Pardon typos, I'm probably using my fat thumbs on a tiny phone.
longinvest
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by longinvest »

Wade Garrett wrote:Is there another easy/safe way aside from those sites and being an Excel expert that I’m not thinking of?
Wade,

I use the Bogleheads Wiki Calculating personal returns spreadsheet which calculates returns across multiple accounts. The spreadsheet also provides a growth of $10,000 chart. It is very easy to use. It can be downloaded or used online.
Variable Percentage Withdrawal (bogleheads.org/wiki/VPW) | One-Fund Portfolio (bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=287967)
gerntz
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by gerntz »

My advisor does it. It's why I pay him 2% of AUM.
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Taylor Larimore
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2%+ advisor costs ?

Post by Taylor Larimore »

gerntz wrote:My advisor does it. It's why I pay him 2% of AUM.
gerntz:

Very few investors should pay a very high 2% (plus expense ratios) for Assets Under Management (AUM). This article by Jason Zweig explains:

It’s Time to End Financial Advisers’ 1% Fees

Best wishes.
Taylor
"Simplicity is the master key to financial success." -- Jack Bogle
Nearly A Moose
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by Nearly A Moose »

longinvest wrote:
Wade Garrett wrote:Is there another easy/safe way aside from those sites and being an Excel expert that I’m not thinking of?
Wade,

I use the Bogleheads Wiki Calculating personal returns spreadsheet which calculates returns across multiple accounts. The spreadsheet also provides a growth of $10,000 chart. It is very easy to use. It can be downloaded or used online.
This is the spreadsheet I run as well. Very easy to use.
Pardon typos, I'm probably using my fat thumbs on a tiny phone.
dflaher
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by dflaher »

MI_bogle wrote:
grettman wrote:Like others have posted... I accept the results of the market. Since I run a lazy portfolio I don't see why I need to track its performance.

I do, however, track my savings performance. My spending levels is something I have relatively complete control over so that matters most to me.

I do like to track my net worth and I do that by logging into all my accounts on the first day of the month to capture the ending balances of the previous month. Similar to Larry, but much more frequently, I do this partly because I want to make sure things are on the up and up.
+1

I focus mostly on savings rate because that's what I can control. I expect that as I get closer to retirement, I will focus slightly less on savings rate and slightly more on investments (more on the risk and asset allocation side obviously, rather than return)
Same here also. I would however like to question others' responses as to the actionability of the lazy portfolio's performance/return. I mostly agree it's not very actionable (we take what the market gives, as someone said) but portfolio performance could determine spending levels, especially during retirement. If the markets are doing well for a prolonged period of time I might choose to spend more, and conversely if not.
dbr
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Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by dbr »

dflaher wrote:
MI_bogle wrote:
grettman wrote:Like others have posted... I accept the results of the market. Since I run a lazy portfolio I don't see why I need to track its performance.

I do, however, track my savings performance. My spending levels is something I have relatively complete control over so that matters most to me.

I do like to track my net worth and I do that by logging into all my accounts on the first day of the month to capture the ending balances of the previous month. Similar to Larry, but much more frequently, I do this partly because I want to make sure things are on the up and up.
+1

I focus mostly on savings rate because that's what I can control. I expect that as I get closer to retirement, I will focus slightly less on savings rate and slightly more on investments (more on the risk and asset allocation side obviously, rather than return)
Same here also. I would however like to question others' responses as to the actionability of the lazy portfolio's performance/return. I mostly agree it's not very actionable (we take what the market gives, as someone said) but portfolio performance could determine spending levels, especially during retirement. If the markets are doing well for a prolonged period of time I might choose to spend more, and conversely if not.
What you would track, and many do track, is the total asset value of the portfolio. That would be relevant to reaching the goal of retirement.

In retirement tracking the value of the portfolio relative to what was estimated and the amount of spending relative to what was estimated makes sense.
cpumechanic
Posts: 186
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2010 10:42 pm

Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by cpumechanic »

I use fullview on Fidelity. I was told long ago by a fidelity rep that the brokerage version had more features when compared to the fullview on the 401K account from my employer.

Each week I use the budget feature to track/observe/check for fraud all expenses/transactions from all my accounts (bank, credit cards investment accounts).

It also has a nice portfolio analysis feature that presents an accurate asset allocation (stocks vs bonds)... as long as you select an account that is brokerage first, then portfolio, then analysis.

It took me a while to set up, and learn to use the brokerage version, but I am happy with the result.

Yes.. it has all my logins and pw in one central location so there is some hack risk.. but.... since I see any/all transactions each week the chance of fraud is greatly reduced (my view).

Hope this helps

CPU
JW-Retired
Posts: 7189
Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:25 am

Re: How do you track your portfolio's performance?

Post by JW-Retired »

Wade Garrett wrote:My portfolio consists of a mutual fund account (Vanguard) and a separate brokerage account (Fidelity). I own double digit funds (yes I’m a slicer/dicer) between the two accounts. I’m trying to determine the best/easiest/safest way to track my portfolio’s performance.
I too have Vanguard and Fidelity accounts. I "track it" by every few months looking at the quarterly statements and filling in a few boxes in a spreadsheet I made to compute AA and other things. It never takes more than a half hour.

I tried Quicken for a while but quit it many years ago because of security and it just not being worth the bother.
JW
Retired at Last
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