Portfolio Editor - from old Portfolios

[CGB]

I am confused. I used to have a master portfolio containing all investments for easy reveiw and update. So I copied that into the new portfolio editor, and am know reassembling my various other portfolios from the past such as old brokerages and varioius "Watch list" catagory portfolios that may have included transactions.

It looks like I made a lot of money, or FM is adding together the shares in all copies of the same investment in different subportfolios. Can I no longer have a master portfolio and various other portfolios with the same investment? Is the 'link' function the solution?

Thank you.

Clarke

[Mark]

Hi Clarke,

Any given sub-portfolio is valued by adding up all the contents of that sub-portfolio, all the way down the hierarchy. If you have the same investment included in a sub-portfolio twice, it will be added twice into the value of that sub-portfolio. The solution is to create your hierarchy in a way you want to view it. So, you could do something like this:

Code: Select all

- Master
  - My Holdings
    - Account 1
    - Account 2
  - My Watch Lists
    - List 1
  - Indices

That way, you can report on "My Holdings" to get just the value of your holdings, without including items in your watch lists, or any other sub-portfolios you don't want. You can create as much hierarchy as you want, and graph/report at any level in that hierarchy.

Link sub-portfolios are useful if you want to keep an exact copy of a given sub-portfolio in another location in your sub-portfolio hierarchy. For example:

Code: Select all

- Master
  - My Holdings
    - Account 1
    - Account 2
  - My Taxable Accounts
    - Link to Account 1
  - My Tax-Free Accounts
    - Link to Account 2

This way, anything you update in the "Account 1" will automatically be reflected in the link to that account, without duplicating any data.

[CGB]

I see. Thank you.

One issue is that I used to use the master list to view overall performance accross all brokers from the beginning of time. I also held the same files in seperate account folders.

I guess it will be easiest to keep the one investment file with old history in my current broker folder and keep copies of old broker investments in a seperate branch that will not be included in reports. Alternatively I could create different investment files for each broker, but that would be difficult and it is interesting to see the older transactions.

Do you still recommend keeping a master portfolio with all investments for finding and sorting, etc? If I take all the duplicate investments out of the master portfolio folder, I guess they will all show up when selecting the master portfolio in the investment drop down list or running a master portfolio report?

[CGB]

I wonder if it reasonable to program fund manager to not include duplicates of the same investment file in reports and graphs, or would this cause other problems?

[Mark]

Hi CGB,

You can still see the performance across all accounts. In my example below you would report at the "My Holdings" sub-portfolio. This includes everything underneath that sub-portfolio, so it contains all your accounts.

If you own the same investment in different accounts, you want a separate investment file for each holding of that security. That way you can track the transaction history separately. See:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/faq_ ... tments.php

If you don't want multiple copies of the same investment in a particular sub-portfolio, just simply don't include more than 1 copy of that investment.

No, we don't recommend putting all the investments in the top level Master Portfolio. They should only be located in the lower level account sub-portfolio. In my example below, you wouldn't have any investments directly in "Master" or in "My Holdings". All the investments are located in their associated "Account" sub-portfolio only. This way, you can report at "My Holdings", and see all your investments, just once.

[CGB]

Thanks. I understand how it works now. I don't keep the same investement at different brokers at the same time (where it would be essential to create a new file), but occationally change brokers. I will probably opt to loose the integrety of the older broker account folders rather than creat new investment files for continuing investments at a new broker because I like to see my past notes and transactions when working with the same security with the new broker.

I am thinking that if FM did not include duplicate files in reports then one could leave copies of the the continuing investment files in the old broker account folders (like I did before), instead of just leaving the closed out investments (needed for historic reports).