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Portfolio Tracker Pro will give you new insight into how your investments are performing over time, using color and graphs to make the results easily intelligible. You can quickly see how you are doing, identify the winners and losers, and compare your performance to market indexes like the Dow Jones Industrial or the S & P 500. Unlike the profit and loss numbers you might see at your brokerage, Portfolio Tracker Pro displays a time chart of investment performance with all the up and downs. You can superimpose the value of your portfolio, compare how individual stocks or mutual funds are performing, and overlay the amount invested or your stock basis. You can also see how your investments are allocated, recalculate your asset allocation, see your rate of return, and view how your mutual funds or ETF’s are rated.
The easiest way to get the history is to read in a QIF file from Quicken, or another financial package that generates QIF files. QIF files not only have all your investment transactions, but they can contain multiple accounts and detailed security information. See below for detailed instructions on creating a QIF file in Quicken.
If you don’t use Quicken or a similar program, then a good alternative is to download transaction history from a brokerage, either in CSV, QFX, or OFX format. You can also download and import Google Finance portfolios. Unfortunately Yahoo Finance does not allow you to download anything other than a list of stock symbols, which is not very useful. The last alternative is to enter investment history directly in Portfolio Tracker Pro. If you don’t have too many buys, sells, or mutual fund dividends, then this will be reasonably quick as well.
If you download from a brokerage they may only provide 6 or 12 months of history, and might not contain all the security details, but Portfolio Tracker Pro will use whatever information is available and display the results. Each brokerage has different procedures for downloading, but most brokerages can create a file that Portfolio Tracker Pro can read. You could also get transaction information from other sources into a spreadsheet and save it as CSV format.
Start up Portfolio Tracker Pro, select File and then Open QIF File, Open OFX/QFX File or Open CSV File. This brings up a file chooser, go to the folder where you saved the transaction file and select it. Portfolio Tracker Pro will process the file, and create the chart and holdings information.
The Portfolio Tracker Pro screen has two sections. On the left are the preference tabs where you can select different accounts, and also select which securities and categories to include. On the right are the information tabs for displaying investment information. When getting started, just use the defaults for the left side tabs, and view the information presented in the right side tabs.
Portfolio Tracker Pro uses the concept of Portfolios to group accounts. Accounts are similar to Quicken Accounts – a single account at a brokerage or similar. However, many times you might want to look at the overall performance of more than one account and that is where Portfolios come in. For example if you and your spouse have multiple IRA’s you might want to look at how they are doing in aggregate, rather than only being able to look at performance of one and then the other. Or if you changed brokerages recently you would want to see your historical performance from both brokerages as a single account. Or your assets might be split between different brokerages for some reason or other and you want to see them as a unit. You can also use portfolios to compare sets of accounts. For example you could compare how your retirement accounts are performing versus your taxable accounts. Or perhaps you use an investment advisor and want to compare their performance with other accounts or indexes. Or maybe you are just competitive and see how your investment returns stack up against someone else.
You can select which portfolios to view in the Accounts Tab and the Wiz Chart will always show each portfolio with its own performance, value etc. The ROI Tab will also show the Returns for each portfolio separately.
You can create portfolios in the Accounts tab – see below. If you import QIF files from Quicken and want to have the portfolios automatically created when importing the QIF file, name the account “account\portfolio” (a backslash between the account name and the portfolio) in Quicken and Portfolio Tracker Pro will create the portfolio when the file is imported. This will also work for when importing account names from CSV files.
Note that the ability to create portfolios and compare them is now available in Portfolio Tracker Pro.
Portfolio Tracker Pro has the standard File Menu for creating a new file, opening a file, saving a file, saving a file with a new name, and closing a file. Portfolio Tracker Pro uses the .qwz file extension, and you can also open a file by double clicking on a .qwz file in Windows Explorer. You can only have one instance of Portfolio Tracker Pro running, and only open one file at a time.
Portfolio Tracker Pro also has Import Menu’s to import transaction information from different sources, such as QIF, CSV, and OFX/QFX. Doing an import adds the information from the imported file to the currently open file, so one can import multiple accounts from different sources and combine them into a single file. Simply select Import QIF File, Import CSV File or Import OFX/QFX File, select the file in the file chooser, and select Opento import the file. If you imported a QIF file that was generated from Quicken and now have an updated version of the QIF file, then use Re-Import QIF File. This keeps any security information or asset allocation information you might have downloaded or input, but replaces all the investment accounts with the accounts and transactions in the new file.
Save Preferences and Restore Preferences give you the capability to save all the account, security, and category preferences independent of the qwz file. This would be used if you are periodically re importing data that you download from another source such as a brokerage, and want to reapply the preferences you used previously.
The Export Table as CSV is used to create a CSV file from the currently viewed data table (transactions, holdings, allocation, etc). This may then be read by Excel or another spreadsheet program.
The Edit Menu contains standard clipboard operations. Use Cut and Paste while editing a table to cut and paste an individual cell entry. UseCopy to copy either an individual cell entry, or a range of selected cells to the clipboard. Use Copy Table to Clipboard to copy the currently viewed table, i.e. transactions, securities, etc to the clipboard suitable for pasting the contents into Excel or other spreadsheet program. You can also use the standard Ctrl-C for Copy, Ctrl-X for Cut, and Ctrl-V for Paste.
Use the Insert Menu to add new accounts, securities, and transactions.
Inserting an Account is just the account name.
Inserting a security brings up a dialogue to specify the security information. You can either use the Security Lookup… field which does an online lookup as you type, and select one of the choices, or enter the security information manually. A new security must have a name, everything else is optional.
Inserting a transaction brings up the transaction dialogue. You should select an appropriate action such as Buy or Sell, and if you have multiple accounts select the account to insert the transaction into. For transactions that involve securities, you can either use the same lookup feature from the security dialog, or select a security that you have already used from the Security Name or Symbol pull down menu. Depending on the type of transaction, some or all of the fields for price/quantity/commission/total may be required. For transactions such as a buy or sell, you can determine which fields should be input, and which field should be calculated by selecting the appropriate Calculate radio button on the right side of the dialog. For example if you bought 100 shares at $12.55 each and paid a $6.95 commission then you would want the Total calculated automatically. On the other hand if you bought $1000 of a mutual fund at a price of $11.89, then you would want the Quantity calculated automatically.
Use the Update menus to update specific security information. Updating Quotes gets the current price for all securities. Updating Price Historygets the price history for all your securities, which takes somewhat longer. Updating Security Classifications gets the classification for all your securities, and updating Fund Ratings gets the rating (1 to 5, where 5 is best) for your Mutual Funds and ETF’s. You can also update Everything, which does all of the above in a single step. Everything is very useful when first importing data. After that you may only need to update price history or quotes which take significantly less time.
The view menu allows you to select which Investment Tabs are shown. The top part of the menu has selections for tabs such as Getting Started, Log, which are optionally displayed. Select the appropriate menu to make the tab visible, and select if again to remove the tab entirely. The bottom part of the menu has selections for the Investment Tabs that are always available, and is an alternative way of selecting them.
The Help menu contains a link to this help file, a purchase link, the About information for the program, and the Enter License dialog.
Normally the Portfolio Tracker Pro license is sent in a file named PortfolioTrackerPro.lic which should be saved in the same folder in which Portfolio Tracker Pro is installed. If this file is not available, for example because your e-mail provider blocked the attachment, then the Enter License dialog provides an alternative method to input the license. In your e-mail reader select the license code by dragging the mouse over it, use Ctrl-C (press the Ctrl key and the C key at the same time) to copy the license code to the clipboard, and then under Enter License use Ctrl-V (Press the Ctrl key and the V key at the same time) to paste the license code into the dialog. Select OK, and the code will be used, and a PortfolioTrackerPro.lic file will be created.
The Portfolio Tracker Pro screen uses a series of Tabs to display information. There are two sets of Tabs – the ones on the left are used to set preferences on what it displayed, and the ones on the right are different graphs and tables with investment performance information. Initially the left side tabs will be set to have everything on; you can just keep them that way, and explore the data in the right side tabs.
Lists all the accounts that have been opened, either from a single QIF file or from multiple QIF or CSV files. If you only have one account, then you will not be using this tab. If do you have multiple accounts loaded then you can select which accounts are active, and which are inactive. If you have multiple accounts that ought to be considered together (for example you moved from one brokerage to another, or your assets are split between accounts) then you can combine multiple accounts into a portfolio and use the portfolio as you would a single account. To create a portfolio, select one or more accounts, then select Portfolio, give the portfolio a name, and Portfolio Tracker Pro will create a portfolio. Portfolios can also be selected to be active or inactive. Each portfolio is shown distinctly in the Wiz Chart and Returns tabs.
Each portfolio also has its own tabs for Holdings, Allocations, Transactions and Detailed Performance.
Lists all the stocks or other securities found in the active accounts. Normally they will all be selected, but you can turn off stocks you don’t want to include for whatever reason. You can also select all stocks, all mutual funds, or all other to quickly turn on or off many securities at once.
This tabs lists of all the categories found for cash transactions in the selected accounts. These preferences are likely only useful if you are importing a QIF file from Quicken or other financial package. When calculating investment returns it makes a difference whether cash transactions are investment related (i.e. paying account fees, or perhaps an investment advisor) or non investment related (i.e. transferring money to buy something). To get accurate performance and ROI calculations, its very important to know which is which.
Portfolio Tracker Pro uses some typical categories to make an initial selection, but you should make sure it is correct. Categories which are checked are included in investment returns, categories that are unchecked are not. So select categories like “Investment fees”, and un-select categories like “Buying a car”, “Quarterly withdrawal ” and the like. Note that the categories selected here only affect the Wiz Chart, ROI, and Detailed Performance tabs, and have no impact on investment Holdings or Allocation.
This contains a very abbreviated help screen.
This is a table of all investment transactions in the selected accounts, one tab for each portfolio. The transactions can be sorted by date, security, symbol, etc simply by clicking on the column header. Select the separator in the header and drag it to change the width of a column. Insert a new transaction by clicking the Insert button at the bottom – see the Insert Menu above for more details on inserting transactions.
Edit a transaction by selecting the row and then the field that you wish to edit. Enter the new information and select Save in the bottom menu. To edit the type of transaction, or the security, use the appropriate pull down value. For transaction types such as buy or sell, when you change a field such as quantity or price the transaction is automatically recalculated to use the value you just input. Delete a transaction by selecting the row and then Delete in the bottom menu.
Normally the Transactions tab will show all transactions for all accounts in a portfolio. If you are not in a portfolio, use the accounts Tab on the left side and select the appropriate account(s) to show transactions for. As for all table information, you can select one or more rows, copy them to the clipboard with Ctrl-C and then import into Excel or other programs. To copy the the entire table in a format that is suitable for Excel, with column labels, use Edit – Copy table to Clipboard.
The Holdings tab contains the current list of stocks or other securities in the selected accounts. This can be sorted by any column by selecting the header. Use Update Quotes to get the latest price for all your stocks and funds. Use the Update Classifications & Ratings button in the bottom menu to update the investment classification and rating of mutual funds and ETF’s. Note that ETF’s should have security type of “Mutual Fund” or “ETF” in Quicken, or wherever the data is created so that they will be recognized as such.
The Allocation tab displays the current asset allocation. For most stocks, mutual funds, and ETF’s the table shows both the detailed classification (i.e. China Stocks or Large Value Stocks) and the overall asset class (i.e. Stocks or Bonds). If you have a portfolio with multiple accounts, then the account column will show the account containing each position. Otherwise the account column will be hidden. The Update Quotes and Update Classifications buttons are a shortcut to update the current prices and classifications for each holding. The Allocation tab is where you would rebalance a portfolio or account for asset allocation.
The Allocation tab should be showing each of your holdings and the amounts and prices should be up to date. First set the target percentages for each stock or mutual fund by entering a value in the Target % column for each holding, for example 40% for a bond fund. Portfolio Tracker Pro will set an initial value that is close to the current value, but that is just to help you with a starting value. Note that the target percentages should add up to 100% and the total will show in red if its not 100%. The target percentages are saved in the qwz file, but if you want to save them to use after re-importing transaction date they can be saved on your computer and read back in with Save/Restore buttons at the bottom menu .
The Adjustment and Action columns show how much of that asset you should buy or sell to get to the target percentage, keeping the total amount of buys equal to the total amount of sells. If you want to override those value for whatever reason, enter a new value in the Actualcolumn. For example, you might want to buy or sell round numbers, and you probably don’t want to buy or sell tiny amounts. You can use the Set Threshold button to set a minimum dollar amount for rebalancing, and all transactions less than the threshold will be set to zero. This is very useful for quickly changing all the ‘tiny’ transactions that you will not actually execute. If you are adding funds and want to buy appropriate amounts to keep your asset allocation, create a Cash transaction to put cash into the account, set the Target % for Cash to 0% (or whatever you keep in Cash) and the calculator will do the rest.
Assuming you make some changes to values in the Actual column, you will notice that the buys and sells no longer balance exactly. You can use the Recalculate button to automatically adjust buys or sells so that the total of buys and sells get back to zero.
Once everything has been adjusted to you satisfaction, then you will probably enter the transactions at your brokerage. The Done column allows you to flag which transactions have been entered so you don’t miss anything. Click the done button for each transaction as you enter it and it will show as being done.
For advanced users, the Allocation calculator can also deal with a situation where you want to combine more than one holding into a single asset to be re-balanced. You can create a Master/Slave relationship between two or more holdings, where the rebalancing buys and sells are calculated on the master, but asset percentage is calculated on the combination of the master and its slave(s). To do this, for the slave holding, type in the symbol of the master holding as the Target %. This will tell Portfolio Tracker Pro that this is a slave holding to the master symbol. This sounds complicated, but if you need it, its actually pretty simple.
The Wiz Chart tab is a graph that gives you quick visual insight into how your investments are performing. Since it is a graph over time, you need to have updated the price history for you securities – if you have not already done this, use the Update Prices button at the bottom to update the historical prices for your holdings. If you just see a horizontal line at first, that is a good indication that the price history needs to be updated.
There are numerous options to show different aspects of investment performance. The horizontal axis is always time, and this can easily be changed to 1 year, 2 years, etc, by using the buttons at the bottom. You can also specify a start date using a calendar. Initially the chart will show “Growth of $10,000” as the vertical axis. This can be changed to percentage change by using the Percent check box. For a single account, the percentage and the growth of $10,000 are essentially the same number in a different format. However when comparing to stock indexes like the Dow Jones Industrials percentages are always used. Use the buttons at the bottom to show the Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 indexes. If you have multiple portfolios, each portfolio will be shown with different colors. Selecting the legend will highlight the corresponding line in the graph. Selecting a line in the graph will display the date and value at the point selected. Hint – select on the corners, not the middle of line segments.
The Value checkbox shows the total dollar value of your accounts using a second axis on the right hand side. The value is shown as a filled area. When the value axis is shown, you can also select the Invested checkbox to show the cumulative investment over time, or the Basis checkbox to show the tax basis of your investments. These are shown as a bold line. The tax basis is always shown using average cost basis. Tracking the cursor over the graph will display the exact amounts for that date as a tool-tip.
The Holdings checkbox will show all the individual securities in your accounts and how they have performed over the time period. It’s a very quick and easy way to get a sense of what is working for you and what is dragging down the portfolio. Selecting the legend will highlight the corresponding line in the graph, which can be crowded if there are many holdings. Selecting a line in the graph will both highlight it and display the value on that date.
The ROI tab shows the calculated rate of return, or IRR for the accounts or portfolios. This can be viewed on a calendar year basis (2012, 2011 etc) or as 1 year returns, 2 years etc. If you did not update price history in the Chart tab, the Update Prices button gets the price history, which is needed to get an accurate IRR calculation.
The IRR calculation used by Portfolio Tracker Pro is the same as the XIRR function in Excel and includes all dividends, re-investments etc, as well as all categories which are checked in the Category tab. For example, any brokerage fees categories you included would reduce your IRR. Therefore, it is your real ROI.
If you really want to delve into the details, the Performance tab shows the actual holdings and performance calculations. It shows the changes in value for those dates when a transaction occurred. It can be expanded to see all dates, and to see the details of each stock position on that date. The stock positions can be viewed as shares, price, basis, or total value.
The Security List tab shows all the securities currently being used in Portfolio Tracker Pro. You can add a new security by selecting the Insert button in the bottom menu. Edit a security by selecting the row, and then the field you want to edit. You can also use the Update Classifications button to automatically get classification information for all the securities.
The Classifications tab shows the 80 or so classifications that Portfolio Tracker Pro recognizes, and which major asset class they are grouped with. You can change which asset class a classification is grouped with.
The Asset Classes screen shows the primary asset classes, and their abbreviations. At this time the only changes you can make is to adjust the colors for each asset class, which will affect the Holdings and Allocation displays.
The text based log of what was imported from a QIF, CSV, OFX, or QFX file. You can verify that everything was read correctly and fix up any problems.
If you go into the Wiz Chart and either see a horizontal line, or nothing at all, then you probably need to update the price history so that there is data to draw a graph of. Use the Update Prices button at the bottom of the Wiz Chart or the Update menu, Price History.
If you still do not see what you expect look at the Transactions tab to make sure your investment transactions were imported correctly. You can also use the View menu and Import Log to view the log file and see there were problems found on the import.
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