Help with Trustnet Virtual Portfolio

ChesterDog

I have been using this for ages and have always worked around this niggle, but is there a 'proper' way?

When you need to make an adjustment to a holding, it's easy to add an additional purchase and, indeed, easy to remove/delete the entire holding if you sell all of it. But what about the adjustment required for a sale of only part of that holding?

JohnRo

You'd just view/edit the existing holding shown in the portfolio tool, then reduce the number of shares indicated to reflect the new reduced number held after the sale and hit save?

or have I misunderstood?

bowlhead99

JohnRo wrote: »

or have I misunderstood?

I think the problem Chester's alluding to is one of "history". Say you have 75 units of a fund that you're tracking in a portfolio with some other funds. Then you do a bit of a rebalance and sell 25 units of Fund A, leaving you with 50.

Maybe you bought something else with the proceeds, maybe you stay in cash for a bit. Either way, you can add some new purchase transactions if you need to "fix" the rest of your portfolio on their system.

Anyway, you can edit your history to pretend you only ever bought 50 of Fund A in the first place if you like, as you suggest.The portfolio monitor will then report today's position at the updated quantity and value including 50 units of A instead of 75.

However, any history of what you used to have, is lost. You can't see any information about how the really smart and lucrative purchase of 75 units at £100 each became 75 units at £1000 each. If you look at the valuation page you can just see how your *current* portfolio mix would have changed value over 1, 3, 5 years.

You can run a "contribution analysis" that shows "how much each of your holdings in their current proportion would have contributed over the last (x) years". But that is not the evolution of your actual portfolio at all. Possibly the reason you've now moved to the current proportions, is precisely because the fund mix you've bought into now has gone down or lagged the benchmark while you had outperformed with a different holding over the previous few years.

So, when you log in next year and look at the charts at June 2015, you will see how you've done since mid May 2014, which will be valid and accurate... but when doing that you'll have to remember that it's only true back to some cut off point like 26 April or whenever you did that sale. The portfolio returns it shows you before that point, are not at all representative of what you actually held.

westy22

The TrustNet Direct virtual portfolio has a 'buy' and a 'sell' button available for holdings so presumably you could import your TrustNet VP into the TrustNet Direct VP and then maintain a more accurate history. https://www.trustnetdirect.com/Portfolio/Virtual/Summary

ChesterDog

Thanks, Bowlhead, that is exactly my issue.

JohnRo, that is what I do as a workaround, but it's unsatisfactory as you can see.

Westy, perhaps I could if I still had a Trustnet Direct account. I closed it having decided to stick with the Share Centre.

greenglide

By registering with the Trustnet Direct site but not opening an account you can use the portfolio tool.

Why doesnt the Trustnet Portfolio tool let you do this? Still not 100% IMHO but better!

Totton

The Trustnet virtual portfolio is problematic but has good information, to better track a virtual portfolio the Morningstar portfolio tool is better as it takes account of buys, sells and dividends. http://www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/portfoliomanager/start?loginType=1&lastvisit=%2fuk%2fportfoliomanager%2fportfolio.aspx

ChesterDog

That looks very good.

Thanks.

marathonmanuk

Hi, I've started using the Trustnet Portfolio tool to monitor my investments. Does anyone know how to add US shares such as Johnson & Johnson and Ebay? They're not listed when I try to add a holding of "International Equity". I also tried the same within Trustnet Direct but they're still not listed.

Thanks in advance

bottleandahalf

ChesterDog wrote: »

Thanks, Bowlhead, that is exactly my issue.

JohnRo, that is what I do as a workaround, but it's unsatisfactory as you can see.

Westy, perhaps I could if I still had a Trustnet Direct account. I closed it having decided to stick with the Share Centre.

Hi. How did you close the account, and were there any charges?
I am being charged £5 a quarter and I don't use the account. I'm currently with HL.
Thanks

ChesterDog

There were no charges, as I recall.

As far as I remember, I just sold the holdings - there were only one or two - and asked them to close the account.