Tag: Portfolio Tracker

person driving a person flying an aircraft

A new asset tracker

RobHLeave a comment

My entire retirement strategy is built around the idea of maintaining my asset allocation1 within the 5 categories I’ve (somewhat arbitrarily) decided to care about, namely:

  • Cash and ultra short term bonds, which make up 5% of my retirement portfolio
  • Bonds, which make up 15% of my retirement portfolio
  • Canadian Equity, which makes up 23% of my retirement portfolio
  • US Equity which makes up 37% of my retirement portfolio
  • And International Equity (anything that’s not the US or Canada) is 20% of my portfolio.

Tracking these percentages across the multitude of accounts2 me and my spouse hold, across multiple brokers requires some external tool help. For many years, it was based on the multi-asset tracker I have linked on the Tools I Use page. But in the past few months, I’ve migrated to a “new, improved” version of that tracker that has been re-architected so it is now based on pivot tables. Here’s some screenshots:

Pivot tables make maintaining the values in my portfolio much, much easier, and having structured tables makes it really easy to create new ways to analyze my holdings.

For instance, with the old asset tracker, say I wanted to compare the total value of my RRIF accounts with that of my spouse. Since we’re too young for income splitting, I’m motivated to try to keep the values between them relatively equal, so that we’re both withdrawing roughly the same dollar amount every year (thankfully, my spouse and I are the same age).

I could do this with the old asset tracker, but it would involve creating a new sheet, linking to the relevant values, (not so easy when you’re working from a single screen) making the calculations and looking at the result. And I would make it quick and dirty, since I wouldn’t know at the time whether it was something I wanted to track long term or not.

With the new asset tracker, it’s just a pivot table away. Takes seconds.

I’ll be posting a more thorough walk-through of it in the coming days, but if you want to check it out, it’s available here.

  1. If you want to learn more about asset allocation, this is a good starting point: Investment basics: Asset Allocation ↩︎
  2. TFSAs for both. RRIFs and Spousal RRIFs for both. Non-registered accounts for both. An extra non-registered account that serves as a cash cushion, and an extra RRIF at Wealthsimple because I needed a new laptop 🙂 ↩︎
crop sportswoman checking information on tracker

Mini Review: Portfolio Tracker

RobHLeave a comment

Over the years I built my own portfolio tracker (the multi-asset tracker) and I’ve shared it on this website1. I’ll be the first to admit it’s not terribly user-friendly, which is somewhat understandable since I built it for myself.

If you want to take a look at another Google Sheet tracker that is fully documented and more user friendly, then you might want to take a look at Portfolio Tracker.

I’m not sure where I first encountered this tool; possibly on Reddit or perhaps the Financial Wisdom Forum.

Anyway, the brains behind this tool are substantial, and I bow to the organization and wizardry of the author. For people who adhere to the idea of asset allocation as a way to make investment decisions, you won’t find a better fit.

So, in a nutshell, what does it do?

  • It allows you to track the value of your portfolio across multiple brokerage accounts using multiple data sources for near-real time quotes2
  • It allows you to set up your own asset classes to track and to set individual targets for each, both at the portfolio level and at the account level3.
  • It will show you how far off you are from your targets and make high-level recommendations for where (what account) to buy/sell to get back on track

One very nice feature of Portfolio Tracker is that a given asset can be divided up into multiple asset classes. For fans of asset allocation funds (like me) this is a critical feature. With this feature you can accurately depict that (say) XEQT is 25% Canadian equity and 45% US Equity.

Once I figured out the terms used in Portfolio Tracker, it was pretty straightforward to enter my own portfolio across the 5 RRIF, 2 TFSAs and 3 non-registered accounts.

What confused me at the beginning about Portfolio Tracker is that it has more layers than I’m used to:

  • It starts with asset. Like XGRO, AOA or ZMMK. So far so good.
  • Assets belong to one (or more) asset classes. If more than one, the percentage has to add up to 100%. Asset classes are where I focus my attention: Portfolio Tracker has more of them than I need4 by default but you can define as many or as few as you like.
  • Asset classes in turn belong to a unique Asset Category)5.; a given Asset Category can be the parent of multiple asset classes (e.g. US Small Cap and US Total Market asset classes are both included in the US Equity Asset Category)
  • And asset categories roll up into Parents (stocks, bonds, short-term)

One minor point of confusion to the Canadian user is the inclusion of TIPS which is a uniquely US investment vehicle. In Canada you can buy real return bonds or buy ETFs that hold TIPS if you wish. I don’t bother with either myself.

The only limitation I could find in this tool was that it didn’t support multiple currencies. If you hold USD assets (as I do), that is a very serious limitation, but one that I could (and did) correct myself pretty easily with a few changes. When I sent a note to the provided support email on that limitation, the author promptly replied and admitted it was not the first time someone had asked about it.

I recommend this tool as a user-friendly introduction to tracking your own portfolio.

  1. I’ve built a new version based on pivot tables; on my to-do list is to make it generic enough to share. The new design lifts some ideas from Portfolio Tracker, in fact. ↩︎
  2. At one time my own tracker did this too but as it requires web scraping code it breaks pretty frequently, and in the mean time googlefinance() has become much more reliable ↩︎
  3. I’ve only really cared about portfolio level, but I have some broad rules about what goes where at the account level. TFSA: Equity only. RRIF: only place outside of the cash cushion where cash can be held. And the only place I hold bond funds. Non registered: equity only. ↩︎
  4. It divides US Equity into small cap (“US Small Cap”) and total market (“US Total Market”). This particular example I found a bit weird since logically “US Small Cap” is normally considered part (albeit a very small part) of the “US Total Market”. ↩︎
  5. Asset Categories for me are a level of detail I don’t need. If you set them to be the same as your Asset Classes then they effectively aren’t used. Although probably best to given them “AC”names so you don’t get mixed up, e.g. US Equity asset class belongs to US Equity AC asset category. ↩︎