A more powerful note system

[Djobydjoba]

I don't use the note features of Fund Manager because the way notes are currently implemented doesn't really suit my needs. So I use a note system outside of Fund Manager but I'd like to be able to manage my notes directly into the program. IMO the note system is really important and that would be great if a versatile / flexible / powerful note system could be implemented in FM.

Most of my notes are assessments of the technical and fundamental states of the various financial markets (stocks, sectors, foreign exchange market, commodities, bond market...), notes on what I need to watch out for, notes on my investment priorities, on risk management, on goals, on the mindset I have to maintain...
So associating most of those notes to a specific investment, and what's more with a specific date (which is a mandatory input to create an investment note in FM) doesn't suit my needs.

In addition, I need a central place to display and manage the notes. AFAIK, the only way to display the notes of several investments is currently by the Investment Transactions report, with a specific filter. It makes sense from the way notes are currently considered as a data type attached to each investment. But it is not a pleasant and practical place at all to manage the notes.


I have some suggestions on how the note system could be extended.

I would like to be able to create / attach notes to sub-portfolios too, not only to investments. Because most of my notes are not related to specific investments but to domains / sectors / areas, sub-portfolio notes would be much more relevant to me.

And I would like a single place where all the notes (linked to sub-portfolios AND to investments) could be visualized and, if possible, edited.

Maybe it could work this way:

In the Portfolio Editor, from the contextual menu of any sub-portfolio, we would have access to a "Sub-Portfolio Notes" dialog, where the notes linked to this sub-portfolio could be managed (created, edited, deleted). Additionally, in the same dialog, there would be some filters to display too if desired (and, if possible, to directly manage):

- all the sub-portfolio notes in the current sub-portfolio branch (ie. linked too to the sub-portfolios located in the current sub-portfolio)
- all the investment notes in the current sub-portfolio
- all the investment notes in the current sub-portfolio branch

In this dialog the notes could be filtered too by a date range (but I think that for a sub-portfolio note it would make sense that entering a date is not mandatory).

This way, it would be possible to display (and manage) all the notes (investment and sub-portfolio notes) of any given sub-portfolio branch, recursively or not, from a unique dialog.

This could be the starting point to a powerful note system in Fund Manager, and probably many more nice improvements could be added to this note system later on. Like adding categories for the notes, or other things. Probably many users like me would be interested in improvements in this area.

Thanks.

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Edit: if the idea of sub-portfolio notes is not the best (what happens to the notes when the sub-portfolio is deleted?), the general idea is that I would like a central, dedicated dialog (maybe a bit similar to the Data Register) to display/edit/organize all the notes:
- all the investment notes of the portfolio
- all the "general" notes not linked to specific investments (so recorded in the .MM4 file I guess)

With the ability to group notes by categories (aka tags). Maybe the default categories could be the existing sub-portfolio names, but with the ability to create other category names (Eg: "Strategy", "To buy soon", "To do now" etc.) So categories / tags could be a way to associate optionally notes to a sub-portfolio, but the note would not be technically stored in the sub-portfolio, and if the sub-portfolio is deleted only the associated category/tag would be removed from the note (or not even necessarily).

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

As usual, thanks for the detailed, and well thought out feedback. Seems like a good area for some improvements.

[Djobydjoba]

Mark,

Below I will reformulate and complete my ideas on the topic.

Investment notes
Typically for: events, or information, or thoughts/ideas that can be quite precisely attached to a specific investment in FM. Like: earning announcement, dividend date, split date, takeover bid, exceptional event, investment strategy on the company, points to watch, etc. This means that, for the most part, the content of the note is relevant only for a specific investment.

General (or Sub-portfolio) notes
Typically for: events, or information, or thoughts/ideas that can't be linked to a specific investment in FM, because their scope covers several investments, a sub-portfolio or even the entire portfolio. Like: geopolitical event, thoughts/ideas about an entire sector (automobile for example), central bank announcement, days when financial markets are closed, reminder of a rebalancing to do on a sub-portfolio and the desired target allocation, reminder on progressive investment schedule, inspirational quotes from great investors, investments to watch out (but not yet created in FM, so no investment to link the note to), sub-portfolio growth target by year-end, specific investment rules of a sub-portfolio, etc.


So a note can take several dimensions:
- A piece of information
- A task, something to do
- A reminder: for an event to come, for something to do or something to remember


Some ideas about the features and implementation:

For any note (whether Investments or General/Sub-portfolio note), the following fields:
- A date (As currently. Probably always mandatory)
- A category. Picked-up from a list that can be customized (example of categories: 'Event', 'Announcement', 'Goal', 'Strategy', 'Quote', 'Mindset', 'To Do', 'To Watch', 'Public holiday', 'Thought', 'Risk', ...)
- The content of the note (the note itself)
- The possibility to trigger an alert / notification to pop-up the note at a certain date
This last feature would permit to use notes as a basic task management and reminder system in FM. It's a very important aspect IMO.


For General/Sub-portfolio notes:
I'm deliberately leaving those two terms 'General' and 'Sub-portfolio' here because it depends on the implementation. I really think it makes sense to retain only the term 'Sub-portfolio notes', so those notes will always be associated to a sub-portfolio. Very general notes, not appropriate to attach to a specific sub-portfolio, could be then attached to the root portfolio.

The sub-portfolio notes could appear on the portfolio based graphs (as markers), but equally on the investment based graphs of the sub-portfolio.
For example, a geopolitical event occurs, and it has a significant impact on the markets. A sub-portfolio note for the event is created at the desired sub-portfolio level. Because the event affects many (if not all) investments in the sub-portfolio, the sub-portfolio note marker could be, optionally, displayed on all the investment graphs in the sub-portfolio.


Because a category could be assigned to the Investment and Sub-portfolio notes, we could customize the way the note markers appear (or not) on the graphs for each category.
For example, I could decide to not display on the graphs the markers of the notes belonging to the 'Quote', 'Strategy', 'Mindset', 'Thought' and 'To do' categories. Of course the notes would still appear in the dialog used to display and manage the notes, and maybe used to trigger an alert / notification, if desired).
I think it's a quite important feature too, as many notes will not be necessarily interesting to display on graphs.

The dialog for the display and management of notes would be quite powerful, quite similar to the Data Manager dialog, but only dedicated to notes.
In this dialog, both Investment and Sub-portfolio notes of the selected portfolio branch would be displayed and could be sorted and filtered: by date, by category, by type (Investment or Sub-portfolio notes), by alert/notification date.
It is important IMO that all notes can be displayed in the same dialog. Investment and Sub-portfolio notes would work together. Again, some of these notes, whether linked to Investments or Sub-portfolios, will be treated as tasks and reminders, so the need for a holistic view of the events, tasks, reminders.

I think these as quite precise guidelines about notes that I think would be great to implement. But I don't mean to suggest here a relevant precise implementation. I know you have to deal with the existing too. At least you get the idea.


Finally,

Currently Notes and Alerts data types are considered by the program in the same way as investment transactions. They are managed from the Data Register, which is OK but it doesn't offer the possibility to display (and manage) them globally, but only one investment after the other.
The Investment transactions report is not an good way to manage Notes and Alerts globally. And even the report title ('Investment transactions') doesn't match the nature or notes and alerts.
IMO Notes and Alerts really need their own, tailored, dialog(s) to be displayed and managed centrally. This is certainly the way to unleash the great dormant potentialities of these features.
And for alerts too it would be very useful to display and manage them centrally (holistic view on all the alerts set within the portfolio). And, like sub-portfolio notes, sub-portfolio alerts could be considered too.
Maybe notes and alerts could share the same tailored dialog for display and management, because both features meet and complement each other (as suggested above, the key feature to trigger an alert/notification on notes to use them as tasks and reminders too)

Thanks.

[Mark]

Hi Djobydjoba,

Thanks for the ideas/documentation. I get the ideas of what you're looking for, so this is very helpful.

[MattGMT]

Hi Mark,

I have always felt that the notes system could be extended considerably and I agree with Djobyjoba's ideas here.

Regards,
Matt

[Mark]

Hi Matt,

Thanks for the feedback.

[Houstonwb]

+1, particularly with some sort of reminder pop-up.