I just found out about Portfolio Performance and am attracted to how it is able to graphs returns for a portfolio, particularly the dividend returns section.
However, I have two main problems.
(1) How do we include unlisted securities, such as certain accredited investor funds, or maybe private equity funds, or real estate, into a portfolio in PP? If we have a monthly NAV for the fund, are we able to chart the unlisted security’s performance?
(2) If I invest in a fund that pays out distributions, I know that I can tell PP that the fund has paid out a distribution and it pays to my cash / reference account. However, what if I want to tell PP that the distribution is reinvested in the same fund? I cannot seem to find a reinvestment option.
Thanks again for creating PP. It looks great, and I hope to be able to fix these two issues.
Goondu Investor
Singapore
p.s. Unfortunately, I do not understand German, and have been using Google Translate to browse these pages. Nevertheless, I appreciate any help anyone might render.
Hint: try “deepl” for translations rather than google translate. It is miles ahead (and i believe it is especialy strong with the german-english language pair)
(2) if by “reinvested” you mean, that the number of shares you own increases than the common way is to create two separate transactions: 1 dividend transaction for the full amount and 1 buying transaction for the correct number of shares and aforementioned amount. the price per share adjusts automaticaly to fit your two constraints.
if by “reinvested” you mean, that your number of shares does not change, then that usualy means you dont have to do anything - the price per share should increase because the fund is reinvesting the money internaly.
(1) unlisted securities are tricky to handle. i believe the consensus for real estate is, that it does not realy work well with pp. for other assets it might work to use the csv import to create a price history and import the montly price. you will most likely not be able to create an automatic system for that.
(2) In my case, for actions like a scrip dividend, or a reinvestment in a mutual fund, there is actually no cash received. So creating an entry in the cash / reference account that is later reversed would actually be inaccurate in form, though it is accurate in substance or effect.
Also, sometimes the quoted price paid is slightly different from the actual price calculated.
For example, if I had 1,000 shares, and was entitled to a cash dividend per share of $0.10, or a scrip dividend at a reinvestment price of $1.10, with the number of units rounded down to the nearest whole number:
I would either receive cash of $100 or 90 new units (rounded down from 90.91).
So now, when entering in PP, should I enter my new units at a cost of $1.10 or would I enter them at a cost of $1.1111 (based on $100 / 90 units)?
The application I currently use (StockMarketEye) allows me to enter it at $1.10 (after I acknowledge that Value != Price x Qty), but PP forces me to enter the cost per new unit at the calculated price based on the total value divided by the number of new units.
I managed to import the CSV file with the date and quote history values into PP. But a problem I am having is that while the current NAV is shown as 13.23, PP thinks it is 13,230,000.00. So 1 unit is worth $13.2 mln units instead of $13.23.
How can I tell PP that the “.” is to be read as a decimal rather than as a “,”?
Thanks,
Goondu Investor
Singapore
p.s. As for Deepl vs. Google Translate, I am using Google Translate built into my Chrome browser. I don’t think Deepl can be integrated in a similar way. Also, I need Google Translate for Asian languages, which Deepl does not support.
(2) there is no reinvest, so the 2-transaction-way is the only way you have if you want to keep your performance data correct.
regarding the rounding: if you receive 90 shares at 1,1€ then i would use 90*1,1€ as the payout value. the lost dollar cuts into your performance and is not actualy something you get. But this depends on what you want to record in pp. The 100% correct transaction, or the correct performance.
(1) I thought you were talking about 100% unlisted assets. assets with no yahoo history but ISIN/Ticker can usualy be imported in other ways. Quellen für historische Kurse is a compilation of some ways. If you can find a table with a static URL, then you can use this instead of yahoo finance. if the asset is on alpha-vantage, then you can sign up there for a free account and use your id to get quotes.
the “.” and “,” problem in csv can be fixed beforehand with find&replace. not sure how to handle it within the automatic price import.
(2) If I accept your view, the payout value is $99 and my cost of reinvestment is $99. But isn’t the actual cost of reinvestment $100 (ie. value of the cash dividend), even if I only receive $99 worth of stock? Alternatively, if the reinvestment units are rounded up (such as for Singapore-listed OCBC), I could get a bonus of $1 for $100 of dividends.
Also how does PP handle receiving dividends in a currency different from the currency of listing. (Eg. HSBC is listed in three different currencies (GBP, USD, and HKD), but the dividend is paid in USD, and the price of reinvested stock is also given in USD. For Asians, we tend to buy the HKD version of the listed counter.) I cannot find an option to change the currency of the cash dividend received.
Also, I imagine there might be difficulties explaining the extra “cash” transactions if I were to print out the list of transactions and pass them to an auditor.
(1) I looked up some of the websites you pointed me to and searched for the ISIN code I had referenced. While the websites might have historical price data for around 6 months, I guess I tend to need historical data that goes back a number of years, since I invested in some of these 5 to 6 years ago.
At the same time, I noticed that data exported from the websites use a comma as a decimal, making importing of CSV files into Excel a bit more challenging than expected.
Is there a way to get PP to import US-style decimals instead? (As that is the typical style used in Singapore, and also used in PP’s English interface.)
(2) you could keep the lost dolar as transactaion costs. again, that depends on what you want to achieve.
I think PP choses the payout currency in regards to the receiving bank account. If you choose an USD account, the dividend should be tranfered accordingly.
regarding the auditor: yes indeed, that might be confusing, albeit not unrealistic. it is the same as a manual reinvest of the stock with the only exception of tax deduction: you usualy dont pay earnings taxes immediatly on reinvested dividends but rather when selling them again.
(1) i do not think there is a way to tell PP what decimal style to use. You can replace it in the csv beforehand thou.
although your email is now a bit “older”, a comment from my side because I am “testing” PP also for my private equity fund investments. I have used the following steps:
Capital Calls are recorded with buying shares at EUR 1, as a consequence during investment period my invested capital shows in all overviews.
In the reporting from the fund, I use the residual value multiple to record the remaining NAV manually once or two times per year. As an example, if the fund is purely investing, the multiple is always 1, so the price for me stays at EUR 1 per share I acquired. If the fund’s NAV is going up, multiples becoming e.g. 1.5, I adjust. This then leads to my investment correctly valued.
Any distribution is recorded as a dividend.
My challenge is that unfortunately I have not yet identified a way in the asset overview to show the distributions aka dividends net (after taxes) to calculate the net/ net performance to me.
Maybe you are still using PP then we can also exchange experience separately.