Portfolio visualisation

[Mario Kadastik]

I was curious as to what people use to visualize their portfolio behavior over time. Most tools that allow direct market access have very limited data on the portfolio history and even if they do they mostly don't really show the history in a graphical representation etc.

Right now I have an excel spreadsheet where I enter all my trades every time I make them and then I have a bunch of sheets that figure out current options positions that are still active (used to be an issue when using a broker, less now with direct market access) as well as what the monthly profit/loss amounts were, but that's really skewed as I mostly trade options and buying an option in August and selling it in September makes for a loss in August and porfit in September right now Getting things even more complex trying to figure out options that are still active both long and short and wether they were also in August 2012 is something I don't fancy doing in Excel without resorting to serious programming in VBA and it's been about 5+ years since I last coded VBA.

So I was curious do people have some portfolio tracking software they use where you enter your trades and it visualizes historic portfolio value change, current assets, total cost of fees, total p/l, statistics on which tickers have provided most/least profit/loss etc. Having mostly traded weekly and monthly options it's been a bit less of an issue, but I've now also started to trade LEAPs at times and that makes the profit loss tracking worse. Selling naked puts or calls also makes some heavy tracking as it's hard to estimate what the portfolio actual value is etc.

So suggestions are welcome...

 

[Paul Carter]

I use globefund.com. Some good control of recording transactions of all sorts and some basic graphs for free. I like the reoccurring buy feature which saves time.

 

[sleepyhead]

I just do all of that stuff in my head. I would rather spend my time finding the next great investment than worrying about how my portfolio performed in the past.

edit: Investing is an art, when you start doing it scientifically it becomes a lot less fun. It is kind of like playing golf:

You can either work on your mechanics and bang balls on the range all day long to become a very mechanical player (like Tom Kite) or you can enjoy the sport and just play practice rounds instead of beating balls (like Ben Crenshaw or Bubba Watson).

 

[mershaw2001]

I just do all of that stuff in my head. I would rather spend my time finding the next great investment than worrying about how my portfolio performed in the past.
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I stopped paying attention to the past early on. The only time I ever look back is weekly options, so that i feel good about closing out a short position after some profit I usually want to know the price at which i opened it. Otherwise, for most positions it doesn't matter to me what the opening price was. Since everything is mark to market, all I care about is where I think things will go in the future. I don't track anything retrospectively in spreadsheets and I just review my current positions religiously while watching the news feed and the market moves. I do keep notes and spreadsheets on companies but it's all forward looking about their earnings.

 

[jaanton]

I've developed my own program which helps visualize market and sector correlations. The idea is basic portfolio optimization, but much simpler. If my positions get too correlated I'll look to diversify. When I'm looking to add a position I check for correlation with my existing holdings. Options are tricky to put into that, but using the position delta works pretty well. When you're using options, you're adding leverage much like margin investing. You really need to watch your risk factors if you're playing with options.