Portfolio Change Report

[ballardian]

I'm pretty sure this isn't possible but I wanted to ask anyway. I'm looking at a way to compare 'eras' in my portfolios -- when I added or removed issues basically. What I'd like to be able to do is pull a report since inception that will break the port folio performance down each time I add or remove an issue -- so I can compare different make up of my portfolio to one another, etc.

Go oh ok that time period where I held: X, Y, and Z did good but once I swapped Y out for A and it is now A, Y, Z -- that didn't do so well.

I know I can manually look up all those dates and make the report that way which is tedious. I was just curious if there was any way to use the reporting module to either:

a) get a report of those transition dates that I can feed into the Portfolio Performance report
or
b) get an all in one report that does it all for me

Thanks

[Mark]

Hi ballardian,

You can of course look at performance for any time period you want, but you'd have to manually set the different time periods you're interested in. There isn't something that automatically sets a report's dates based on when you bought/sold.

[ballardian]

Thank you. That is what I thought but I was hoping I was wrong. It would be a really nice feature in a report.

[ballardian]

Hi Mark,

I was thinking about this a bit more today. What would be really nice is a graph that would visually illustrate what positions were held for what time period. It seems it would be fairly straight forward:

Graph X axis would be the time frame selected. Y would just be each issue listed.
Each position held at all between those those would be plotted on the graph.
Each position would be a line/bar that starts and stops on the day >0 shares are owned and it stops when shares go to 0. If the issue is added back it would make a second bar on the same Y axis.

I'm imagining it like wikipedia shows members of bands that come and go. For example:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... 789a82.png

This would make it really easy to see how the general portfolio make up changed over time. Which issues made up my portfolio for how long etc. As I've made a few investment philiosphy changes in the portfolio in the past 15 years it would make 'finding' time frames to hone in on for other reports/graphs much easier than pulling a custom report with the start and stop dates.

[Mark]

HI ballardian,

This sounds like the "Stacked Value" graph type. It is basically a pie chart versus time, and you can make each segment a variety of objects, including investments. See "Graphs / Stacked Value / Investment". This graph type can be plotted so the Y axis is value, or percentage. See "Graph Options / Normalize" to toggle between the two.

[ballardian]

Hi Mark,

Wow Mark. Yes that is much closer to what I am looking for and in fact almost there. Normalizing goes a long way to making it more useful for this by making small issues stand out more. Although in my ideal world / head it would be even more clear by getting rid of relative value almost enitrely. Whether it was another graph or a graph option on this graph would work for me. Before you had posted this I had exported out of FM and make excel graph it like I was thinking -- the simple bars without value make it VERY clear when portfolio make up had changed -- and with symbols on the Y Axis instead of a legend very quick to interpt as well. I attached a copy of both my vision (badly done in excel) and FM stacked value normalized graph for the same portfolio and time frame for illustrative purposes. Perhaps an Equal Weighted Option in addition to Normalize would work really well - b/c the banding bars would only change when asset make up of the porfolio changed.

Where the stacked value graph still takes a bit more to really see that pattern and understand it.

With all that being said its a feautre I'd love to see and also the stacked value gets me much closer and I can live with it just fine.

As always appreciate the software and your support.
ballardian

(and I know I cut off the value part of the FM graph below)

[Mark]

HI ballardian,

Interesting. Thanks for sharing, and the idea/feedback.