In the Portfolio Dashboard, setting the date range (eg. ‘This Financial Year’) displays gains/losses from a calculation of the price of the holding as at the start of the viewing range (eg. 1 July 2021) to the value as of the end of the date range (eg. 30 June 2022 or today if it is prior to the end date).
This is fine for seeing how you are performing so far this year, but it does not show your actual position for the set period, based on the purchase price of the holding.
What I would like to see is an option (switch?) where you can see the capital gain to the end date based on the actual purchase price of the holdings that were held at the start of the period (so does not include holdings that were disposed prior to that period) and calculates the actual capital gain as per the end date of the filter.
This would actually give me a ‘real’ calculation of my financial position (capital gain and total return) as calculated between the start and end dates.
Just wanted to clarify some things as I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
In your example, assume I haven’t sold anything ever and have had a portfolio of stocks for 5 years. What would the difference be between these date ranges?
1 day
30 days
This financial year
Last 2 Years
Because it seems, in wanting to include the original purchase price in your selection, you are essentially wanting the ‘All Time’ range applied to everything. As ‘All Time’ includes every trade you did on every holding.
So in my examples above, if I changed the date range to be 1 day, if it then includes the original purchase price, what would 1 day mean? What would 30 days mean? as they would all include every trade of every holding.
Hopefully the above makes sense, I just want to make sure we are all on the same page.
Absolutely. Sorry if my explanation wasn’t very clear. Let me explain in the context that you have provided. So, assuming that I have held a portfolio of stocks for the last 5 years…
Regardless of what date range I set the filter to (in this context), the calculation will be the price as it is at the END of the filtered period, minus the price at the START of the filtered period. So,
1 day - the calculation would be the days closing price, minus the opening price
30 days - closing price on day 30, minus opening price on day 1
This financial year - closing price today, minus opening price on the start of the financial year (1 July)
Last 2 years - same calculation, just use the range provided
So, what we are getting is not our actual profit/(loss) based on our original purchase price, but a profit/(loss) of the shares that we held during the filtered period, so effectively a snapshot in time.
Obviously, the calculation needs to take into account only shares that were held during the period of interest and if a share was bought/sold during that period, then the calculation would be modified accordingly.
Makes sense? Sorry, I just re-read my original explanation and I did say it needs to calculate the original purchase price - that was very badly worded…