How Do You Track Your Investments Across Multiple Accounts and Firms?

[Viking]

Below is a reply in I made to @maplevalue in the 'Is Concentration a better strategy than Buy and Hold?" thread. I thought some people might find it useful to see exactly how I track my investments. Below I have attached a generic Excel file (tab 1 is a legend and tab 2 is the actual portfolio tracker). Please feel free to use/modify. It really is designed for a Canadian investor. But US investors might find it interesting to see the logic. I see the total value of all my accounts (top right). As I add new positions (or add to existing positions) in different accounts I immediately see the weighting of that position to my total portfolio. If I hold a basket of stocks (like US banks) I capture the total weighting in my weighting summary (top right of spreadsheet). 

 

I find this spreadsheet is useful because it captures everything I want to see in one quick view: my accounts, my wife's accounts (CAN$, US$). I track 9 accounts on this spreadsheet right now (my kids 3 TFSA's are not on the spreadsheet as they are smaller). 

 

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@maplevalue My family has investments in 12 different accounts. It can get confusing to keep track of everything. Confusion rarely leads to higher returns. I manage all 12 accounts as one investment (one bucket of money). I have an excel spreadsheet where i track all holdings by account and by stock. As i make trades i update my spreadsheet (takes only a few minutes). So i know in real time all the stock/sector weightings for my total portfolio. I also have average cost (as i usually hold positions in multiple accounts) and dividend information in my one page summary. Portfolio weighting is what i really care about. I find this big picture view is exceptionally important and useful.

 

What i think about the most is:

1.) do i want to own a stock?

2.) if yes, what position size do i want?

- a starter position for me is usually a minimum 0.5% to 0.75% of my total portfolio

- as an example, i re-established a position in WRB again late today when the stock fell back below $60. I made it a 1.5% position. Larger than a usual starter position. But i understand the company and industry pretty well so i am ok going a little bigger. 

- when i make my first purchase of a stock i also think about how big i want to make it should the stock keep selling off. I would be comfortable taking WRB to a 5% position (of my total portfolio) - assuming no change in the story.

3.) what account do i want to hold the stock in?

- tax free or taxable account? Etc etc…

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Every Dec 31 of each year i ‘freeze’ my Excel spreadsheet. I create a copy and make updates in the new year to the new spreadsheet. I also have a summary page that pulls the total values (for each account) from each spreadsheet. I also capture deposits/withdrawals made that year (RESP, RRSP, TFSA, taxable accounts). My records now go back 25 years. So i know exactly what my long term results have been. For every account. And in total. Factoring in deposits and withdrawals. Yes, a little work along the way. But extremely helpful/useful. Most of the work is getting it set up. 

 

 

Investment Tracker.xlsx

Edited March 24, 2023 by Viking

[Viking]

Here are a couple of screen shots (I made it a little prettier from the first version)...

 

 

 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by Viking

[Gregmal]

That’s insane. I unscientifically just have an idea of what I have and what each holding is relative to that. If I’m comfortable with it I don’t worry and if I am not I change it so I can sleep. I generally view my accounts as two separate, one contains private assets and one public traded ones. 

[scorpioncapital]

I use Quicken, old but good.

[rkbabang]

 

My advice is try to consolidate everything to one brokerage.  I have almost everything in Fidelity.  Way back we used to have accounts at a number of different firms, and I found it too hard to keep track of, so I consolidated everything over to Fidelity where my 401K was.  I rolled my wife's old 401ks over to a Fidelity Roth IRA at one point so even her accounts are there now too.  I set her account giving me permission to view from my account, so I can view everything on one page.

 

So now we have my 401k, our IRAs, our brokerage accounts, and we even use a Fidelity cash management account as our checking account.  So I just track everything there in one spot.

 

I also have other stuff but I track it all separately.  I've got crypto (about 18% of net worth right now) which I track separately with a spreadsheet and I have real estate (around 35% of net worth) which is separate and I have one small account (about 1.5% of net worth) at Interactive Brokers which is managed by someone else for me and that I just look at separately. 

 

So when I figure out what my performance for the year is I ignore crypto, real estate, and the managed account and just look at Fidelity.  Crypto bounces around like crazy and real estate you never really know exactly what it's worth anyway until you try to sell it.

 

[aws]

Poorly.

 

I have roughly a dozen accounts in my name between taxable and retirement accounts at 6 different brokers (down from 8 brokers last year though). It's from a combination of parking shares in a variety of places to get broker sign up bonuses, to meet minimum relationship balances with banks for perks, and for certain brokers being better than others depending on the specific trade I am making. I am close enough to everything that I always roughly know where I stand which works well enough for me, but I'm sure would be chaos to an outsider.

 

I also manage a few accounts for friends and family, but that's actually pretty clean since it's through the IBKR friend and family advisor service, so I can see consolidated holdings easily there.