Tracking portfolio rate of return?

[bank5]

How do you track your portfolio's rate of return? I'm going to start tracking mine so am curious to hear the different methods used.

 

[Spanky]

the old fashion way - spreadsheet.

 

[megacorp-firee]

How do you track your portfolio's rate of return? I'm going to start tracking mine so am curious to hear the different methods used.

unfortunately 'negatively' of late
spreadsheet

 

[LOL!]

MS Money. Is a free trial still available for download?

 

[bank5]

Are there spreadsheet templates that you can download? Or did you set your own up using formulas like - How to figure your portfolio's return - USATODAY.com ?

 

[yakers]

I have a spreadsheet but could do it on the back of an envelope; add up all financial assets (credit union, 401K, IRAs, taxable trading account, ibonds, spare change jar--not including paid off residence) and thats it, compare to previous year. Lost 18.8% in 2008 and gained 18% in 2009, thus not quite catching up. Could be done more precisely since taxable, pretax and tax free are mixed together but it works for me.

 

[walkinwood]

Quicken.

 

[kumquat]

the old fashion way - spreadsheet.

That's modern, old fashioned way is a ledger book and quill pen.

 

[WM]

I use this spreadsheet, which I made based on instructions from an article that was linked here a couple years ago. It uses an Internal Rate of Return function, then a couple more calculations to give your personal rate of return for the average month and year.

I'd be interested to get comments as to whether I'm doing it right!

 

[Alan]

I use this spreadsheet, which I made based on instructions from an article that was linked here a couple years ago. It uses an Internal Rate of Return function, then a couple more calculations to give your personal rate of return for the average month and year.

I'd be interested to get comments as to whether I'm doing it right!

That is what I use, and the template you have looks good to me.

 

[madsquopper]

I'm wondering if there's an error in the template. For one of the columns, I put -10,000 into the January cell, zeros for the rest, and an ending balance of 20,000. This looks like it should be a 100% return but the spreadsheet only shows 71.59%.

Larry

 

[Spanky]

use XIRR instead.