Experiment with portfolio

[Ivan]

Hi Mark,

I would like to do a temporary experiment with my portfolio involving shuffling the investments into a very different portfolio structure. I will be changing only where the investments are located, not any transactions. This is temporary and I don't want any changes to happen to my real portfolio. My plan is to copy the Master Portfolio (.mm4) file and set the read only attribute on all my investment (.dat) files, do my experiment with the new .mm4 file and then delete it and remove the read only attributes from the .dat files. Is this safe?

Thanks,
Ivan

[Mark]

Hi Ivan,

Yes, that would be safe. Strictly speaking you wouldn't need to set the read-only attribute on the *.dat files, since you are only modifying the portfolio file copy. It wouldn't hurt though.

You might want to consider another approach that could be easier. Just make a backup before you start, using "File / Backup...". Now, you can make a copy of your portfolio file if you want to save your experiment, but you wouldn't have to. You could just do your experiment, and when you're done, use "File / Restore..." and restore everything to the original location. This will restore your portfolio file, your investment files, and all your preferences to exactly how they were when you created the backup.