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Good morning,
I'm curious to know how you keep track of your personal finances and investments.
Are you using any software or have you created an Excel sheet?
Good day,
XavierHello Jerome,
I also use FT partly, but I want to have something more global. I will continue to search for the Holy Grail.
Good day,
XavierHi Jerome,
I'm coming back to you regarding the use of FT for monitoring investments.
How do you manage the whole thing? Do you only enter the purchase values (and dates) and then when you resell, you delete the line?
I noticed that the cash is managed in a strange way, I cannot put several accounts and when I add a value in a fiat currency, all the entries are put in this value.I must have missed something, but I can't seem to find my mistake.
Good day,
XavierHello Xavier,
FT is relatively simple to use once you understand how it works. When you buy, you indicate the number of positions, the amount, possibly the transaction fees and possibly also from which source you are financing the purchase (this is interesting precisely because you can buy from different accounts, in different currencies, but to do this you must first have created and funded these accounts, as we will see immediately). Be careful, when you sell, do not delete the line! Otherwise you lose everything... You must make a "SELL LONG" transaction, exactly as you did for the purchase.
To create cash accounts it's very simple, you do as if you wanted to make a transaction, as an asset type you choose cash, then OPEN, then you choose a name for your account, the amount you want to already indicate there and the currency. You can repeat the operation depending on the number of currencies you want to have fun managing. To fund pre-existing accounts, you do the same, but instead of OPEN you choose credit. And to withdraw money, you choose... debit. Very simple.
Be careful, under "settings", you choose your reference currency for the entire portfolio, independently of your cash accounts. I think this is where the confusion comes from for you.
Personally, I never keep large amounts of cash in foreign currencies for a long time. My real accounts in USD, JPY, EUR, CAD, etc. are slowly replenished by dividends and from time to time when the currency has appreciated well against the CHF, I change it to CHF. So, in the "manage dividends" options, I put: "move to cash holding" and I chose my account in CHF. A few hundred francs for a while in other currencies are not going to make a big difference. I could also have chosen to "manage manually" to be more precise, but that would have required more monitoring work for not much more, or "reinvest" but I never systematically reinvest my dividends in the same positions, or "include in return, but not in value", but I want to know the evolution of my account in value and again "don't include dividends", which is of no interest to me.
The only case where I have large amounts of cash in foreign currency is when there are several sales of securities in the same foreign currency. I experienced this for example in 2018 with my American securities, which is why I created at that time a USD account on FT "cash open", which allowed me to put the proceeds of the sale in this currency and to be fairer in monitoring the performance of the portfolio in relation to the variations of the greenback.
So in summary unless you have large amounts in foreign currency, you don't need to worry about creating other accounts, but it is of course possible.
Hi Jerome,
Well, I must really have a box missing at times!
Your description matches what I understood about how FT works, but I still have problems!
I can't create multiple CASH accounts. If I create an "Invest CHF" account and fund it in CHF and then try to create an "Invest EUR" account that I fund in EUR, under the "Cash" tab I would just have an account name "Invest EUR", all denominated in EURO. It's as if the Invest CHF account had been merged with the new one created. I would specify that my "Portfolio" is referenced in CHF (under setting as you mention).
Just to be sure, we agree that if I create 3 cash accounts (with the procedure you mention, selecting cash->open and giving an account name) I should see the name of the 3 accounts appear under the heading "Cash"->"Name":
Have a nice end of the day,
Xavieryes, in any case I managed to create two cash accounts
Now I just did the test to create a 3rd account in another currency and it does the same thing to me as you, it overwrites my second account
so you should at least be able to create a second account, unless there is a bug at FT at the moment
but as I said, unless you make large currency movements and/or leave foreign currencies sitting in an account for a long time, which I do not recommend, I do not really see the point of this approach.
Hello,
So it's definitely a FT bug, I can only create one.
I also noticed another anomaly on FT with the personal screeners and the impossibility of selecting one other than the first to view the content.
A+
XavierHello,
Yes I have already tried with FF, Chrome under Win10 and Linux… it's all the same thing.
We will see when (or if) this will be corrected.
Hi,
Here is the "Portfolio Performance" program that I discovered some time ago to track your portfolio. (see site https://www.portfolio-performance.info/ )
It better matches my expectations of FT, but requires a small investment of time to use.
Good day,
XavierHi Xavier
thanks for the link. What advantages over FT and/or which of your expectations were not met compared to FT's portfolio?
Thank you and have a nice day
Jerome
Hi Jerome,
The first is that my data is local and the project is open source!
You can more easily manage purchases/sales in relation to different accounts (or in different currencies) and there is also the possibility of direct import.
If an asset is not listed (or rather listed on Yahoo or elsewhere), you can create it yourself.
There are cryptos and you can also use the site directly https://divvydiary.com/ which allows you to view dividend payment dates.There are also options to sort by sectors, asset classes, countries, etc., to see how your assets are weighted against each other.
I'm still discovering the different functions.
Let me know if you test it and what you think of it compared to FT.
Xavier
On FT you can also create multiple portfolios, representing multiple accounts. You can also view dividends paid and their dates. You also see asset classes, countries and sectors.
Only Bitcoin is missing, but I make a Bitcoin tracker entry for a corresponding amount when I buy some directly.
In short, it meets my expectations and I certainly don't have the courage to do everything again elsewhere 🙂
So I don't think I'll test it but I'm always listening if you make new discoveries.
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