Parallel Portfolios

[ronconardmoore]

I'd like to run parallel portfolios, one for my actual investments and one for my actual investments with all equity positions moved to fixed income investments. I tried setting up a new portfolio name but all the actual .dat files moved to both portfolios.

How can I set up the two portfolios: actual and hypothetical. I'd like to be able to access either portfolios at any time to compare actual performance and what if performance. In the hypothetical portfolio I'd like to have all actual transactions up to the what if changeover dates.

Thank you.

Ron Moore

[Mark]

Hi Ron,

Yes, you can do this. Just make sure you create new investments for each portfolio, instead of having the same investments copied to both portfolios. They should each have their own separate *.dat investment files, so you can record transactions separately. Use the Portfolio Editor to create some hierarchy similar to this:

Code: Select all

- Master Portfolio
  - Actual
    - Acct 1
    - Acct 2
  - Hypothetical
    - Acct 1H
    - Acct 2H

In each of the account level sub-portfolios you will have your investments. Use the "New Investment..." command to create them if you are doing this manually. You want different investment files (*.dat) in Acct 1 versus Acct 1H. They can be for the same security, like both of them in IBM, but they need to be separate files, so you can record the transactions independently.

To create the new investments, you could also utilize the menu command "File / File Operations / New Investment from Existing...". This will allow you to make a copy of a *.dat investment file, and place it in another sub-portfolio. You have the option of whether to retain the transactions/prices in the copied investment.

If you have a bunch of investments and want to make copies of them, you could make copies of all the *.dat investment files using something like File Explorer. Then, use "File / Open Investment(s)..." in Fund Manager to open the copies into your hypothetical accounts.

[ronconardmoore]

Hi Mark:

Thank you for your reply.

I wonder if I could also use Fund Manager Backup. I would backup my actual .mm4 and .dat using FMB into an "actual backup. I would then set up my hypotheticals into an new master portfolio "hypo" and then back that up using FMB into a "hypo" backup. It seems to me I could do an FMB restore from either the hypo or actual backup.

Thanks,

Ron Moore

[Mark]

Hi Ron Moore,

Yes, you could do it this way as well. You would want to make sure you're storing separate *.dat investment files, so you might want to restore to separate folders on your hard drive.

The downside to this approach though is that you can't have both your hypothetical and actual portfolios open at the same time. Even if you don't want to be able to view them together it is still convenient for things like doing global price updates. You only have to do it once if you have everything in a single portfolio file (*.mm4), and use sub-portfolios to separate your actual/hypothetical.