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Tracking your real portfolio

Record transactions and follow the portfolio you actually hold.

The backtester tells you what would have happened. The Live Tracker tells you what is happening: you record the trades you actually made and follow the portfolio you own, with the same metrics you'd use in a backtest.

1. Create the portfolio

Go to Live Tracker and create a portfolio. An account is required, because transactions are saved: without saving you'd have to re-enter them every visit.

You can keep several separate portfolios (by account, by goal, or by holder) and analyse each one on its own.

2. Enter the transactions

Each operation is a row: buy, sell, DCA or dividend. For each you give the instrument, date, quantity and price.

Two things that clear up the most common doubts:

  • Stock splits are handled automatically. Average cost, units and price series are all adjusted, and splits appear on charts as a dashed vertical line: nothing to fix by hand.
  • Average cost basis is recalculated on every purchase as a weighted average of existing and new units. On a partial sale the average cost of the remaining units doesn't change, correct behaviour, even if it looks surprising at first.

3. Read the metrics

The Statistics tab opens with six tiles: total return %, CAGR, current value, invested capital, total gain and dividends received.

The number worth understanding properly is TWR (Time-Weighted Return), because it answers a different question from total return %:

MetricQuestion it answers
Return %How much did I gain on the money I put in
TWRHow well did the portfolio perform, regardless of when I contributed

If you run a DCA plan, the two diverge systematically: TWR neutralises cash flows and is the only one of the two you can honestly compare to a benchmark. Same distinction as in Simulating a DCA plan.

4. Compare against a benchmark

In Performance vs Benchmark you pick a reference (MSCI World, S&P 500, BTP) and put it against your portfolio's TWR. Both curves start at 0% on the first common date, so the comparison stays readable even when the benchmark has a much longer history.

Performance by asset does the same job one level down: cumulative TWR of individual instruments, all aligned at 0% on the same start date. It shows what's pulling and what's dragging.

5. Look at dividends

Dividends over time is a stacked histogram, coloured by instrument. On a distributing portfolio it's the fastest way to see which funds actually generate income and how that income is growing.

Note the difference from the backtester, where dividends are not included in prices: here they are real transactions you recorded yourself, so they count.

Going deeper