Value change explanation

[bralim]

Dear Mark,
I find it quite useful to be able to understand and isolate the source of value change from one date to another. Is there a report (I haven't noticed one) or an easy (possibly programmatic) way to do that?
Of course for a single currency portfolio of only shares it is easily seen by looking at the change in value of the individual holdings, however for a more complex portfolio with multiple currencies and/or options it might get more complicated. One way to approach the problem is to compute the changes due to each individual factor (first order terms) and then the slop (higher order) this would probably give a good change explanation. For example, one could first change prices only without changing date and forex and compute the value change dP (itemized by investment, say dPi for each investment) then change forex only and compute the value change dFr (for each rate individually) then change date and compute the value change dt and then attribute the remaining to some second order slop. Then one could say that the change in value dV is dV = sum(dPi)+sum(dFr)+dt+slop where slop = dV - sum(dPi)-sum(dFr)-dt.
I can imagine how to compute the dPi (perhaps not exactly but with the changing rate as well) and the dFr however it seems it would be a bit tedious to do manually. A programmatic way to do it, or even better a report would be extremely helpful in my view.
What do you think?
Regards,
Paolo

[Mark]

Hi Paolo,

You can break down a value gain into market gains, your contributions/withdrawals, plus the exchange rate changes. You can get only the market gains portion by using the "Gain (between)" field in a Custom report. You can also use the Contributions/Withdrawals fields to get that portion. There isn't a field you can use to get the portion due only to the exchange rate change. You can of course get this by toggling on/off the "View / Exchange Rate Adjusted" option, but there isn't a way to just get this value difference due to the currency change. That would be a good one to add.

[bralim]

Dear Mark,
Thank you, i will have a look at gain between, however I suspect that for reporting in eur on a investment in usd it will give me the gain between two dates either in usd or in eur (toggling view exchange rate ...), hence to explain the value change in eur from a beginning and end date with eurusd fx fixed at the beginning value i would still need to perform fx manually on the usd gain between. It seems to me that using gain between and toggling the currencies options to use a fixed rate (at the value at the beginning) would get me the market changes at fixed fx.
Now for the part that is not readily available, that is the change in value due to fx. At the moment i could either compute the total change between two dates and assume that whatever was not due to stocks and mfs at constant fx is due to fx and hence obtain the fx change by difference, which i think would be good enough, or i could look at the change in value of an investment of the total amount of investments in a given currency as you had suggested somewhere. So for example, create a usd cash position for the total usd at the beginning date amd then see how much its value changes. If i have several currencies is there a report to compute the totals in a portfolio by currency?
And finally, i am not too familiar with what i can do from the command line yet, is there a way to do the operations above through command line so that i can effectively produce these reports programmatically rather than manually every time?
Thank you again for your help and sorry if i am pestering you with questions and comments but i am ramping up on the software, learning it and loving it but I need a bit of help and testing of my own understanding.
Regards,
Paolo

[Mark]

Hi Paolo,

You're right, the gain between field would include both market gains and fx gains. I do like the idea of adding a custom report field that would show you the gains due only to the fx gains. So, if you had investments in EUR, and your default was USD, this field would show the gain in USD due only to fx changes.

You can create a Portfolio Value report, and "List By" "Currency" to get value totals for each currency in a portfolio. Use multiple dates if you want to see it for more than one date at a time.

The command line capabilities are pretty limited. There are only commands for automating the price retrieval, so you can set up a scheduled task to start FM, get prices, and quit. See the documentation here:

https://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/hel ... mline.html

Please feel free to ask as many questions as you want. It is quite common to have more questions when you're first starting out.

[bralim]

Hi Mark,
Thank you, list by currency helps.
Yes, it would be great to have the custom report field for fx gains only, the USD gains should probably be itemized by the currency that generated them.
Regards,
Paolo

[Mark]

Hi Paolo,

Good point... There really isn't an existing report that has this format, where there is one value per each non-default currency. We may need a new report, or have to add 24 new Custom report fields, which seems a little awkward. A new report would probably be cleaner, but that seems to be a very specific feature that I'm not sure warrants a whole report. May have to give this some thought...

[bralim]

Hi Mark,
Take your time, I have lots to explore and much more to import to fill the past 10 years, moreover we discussed some hacks on how to obtain the currency component so I can get what I need, much better than now.
On the report you could always let the user chose the impact of only one of the currencies if easier. Not too elegant though.
A currency report in my view is a worthwhile report in its own right for a multiple currency portfolio. In reality if you go back to my initial post on a value change report, i think that is an essential tool for any trader (personal or otherwise), being able to clearly explain the change in value in a given period. But then for a portfolio of us stocks, mut funds and bonds all in usd this report exists already, so i guess it depends on your customers' needs.
Regards,
bralim

I guess i should be consistent....

[MRG]

Hi Mark,

I concur with Paolo, having the ability to see the breakdown of performance between what is attributable to the investment in local currency and the currency gain/loss, would be a great feature to add. It would also be nice to have a report showing both the % gain/loss in the reference currency, and the % gain/loss in the local currency, rather than toggling the "exchange rate adjusted" function and referring to two different reports.

Michel

[Mark]

Hi Michel,

Understood, and agree. Thanks for the feedback.

[Andrew1000]

Hi Mark

I am currently trialing the software and I would be interested to split any gains and losses between Fx and underlying fund performance.

I have seen a couple of old posts suggesting that you were considering adding this to the program - but I wondered if there had been the chance to do so?

Thanks

[Mark]

Hi Andrew1000,

Thanks for trying Fund Manager. Sorry, no, this feature has not been added. You can see the performance with or without Fx by toggling "View / Exchange Rate Adjusted", but not on the same report, at the same time.

[Andrew1000]

Hi Mark

Thanks for the advice.

Do you have any plans to incorporate it into an upcoming revision? The issue I am having with the manual approach is if you have a number of additions during the period, breaking out the exchange rate impact becomes quite challenging!

Best Regards

[Mark]

Hi Andrew1000,

I can't say for sure, but this is on our list of possible new improvements.

How about looking at your ROI over the period, both with and without exchange rate adjustment? This will give you an idea of how much of your performance came from Fx and how much from the underlying investment. This will factor in all your transactions during the period.