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PortTrak
2.0 Instructions, Page 2
Pretty as a Picture We've provided here all of the information you might need about Viewing the Chart once you have the data you need. In order to get that data, you'll want to read up on Updating the Indexes. All of the information that is graphed is located on the Charting Data sheet, sheet, so if you'd like a brief tour of that, we've got that as well. By the time you're finished, you'll be viewing first rate charts of what is, hopefully, first rate portfolio performance. Click here to skip to the next section. Viewing the Chart You should know from the start that you will not be able to view any of your chart data for at least two weekdays after you first launch PortTrak. In order to make a meaningful chart, you will need at least two different data points, and it takes two days to get those. Once you've passed that, however, viewing your chart is a fairly simple procedure. You go to the PortTrak menu, and choose the Chart selection. In that, choose "View Chart". PortTrak will present you with a choice for a start date and an end date for your chart. You should pick, of course, the date that you would like to begin from, and the date you would like to view through. Beneath that, you are offered the four measures that you might choose to chart your portfolio performance against. You may choose any or none of these, simply by checking or unchecking the boxes for each of the Indexes. When you are finished, click the OK button. PortTrak charts the values so that on day one of your chart, everything is the same. Therefore, the chart you are looking at is the movement of your portfolio and of the Indexes from the first charting day, which you selected above. Updating the Indexes PortTrak will automatically update the four Indexes against which you chart using a file that you can download from The Motley Fool. If you are on AOL, you will be able to find this file at keyword:PortTrak. On the internet, point your browser to www.fool.com and go to the Technical Support Area. Located there, in the Foolish Technical Support Library will be a file which will be called "PortTrak Charting: Index Update". This file contains the daily updates for each of the four Indexes you'll be charting against. The file is updated regularly, though not daily, and if you read the file description, you'll see what period is covered by the update. You may update as often or as seldom as you'd like, since the files will stay in this library. Once you have downloaded that file, you open PortTrak and go to the PortTrak menu, the Chart selection. Pick "Update Indexes", and PortTrak will prompt you for the file that you downloaded. Charting Data The data that PortTrak uses to create the charts is found on the sheet labeled "Chart_Info". That sheet is unlocked, so that you can add and subtract data at will. That way, if you want to go back and add previous data, or if you want to manually update the Index information, you will be easily able to. The only requirements (and PortTrak will crash if you don't do these things) are that:
1) You must keep the same basic arrangement of data (same order of columns)
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A Bit of Theory In this section, we'll explain the ins and outs of the Value Per Share (VPS) system of accounting. You'll be able to learn the different uses for the Consolidated and Separated Screens. You'll find out how you can change the Charting Data, and Why Graphs Look the Way they Do. Not bad for one short collection of articles, huh? Click here to skip to the next section.
Value Per Share With your portfolio it is probably not so. You might have started this year with $10,000, grown your portfolio a little bit, added $500 in March, taken out $1,000 in July to pay for repairs on a new car, added back a $750 bonus and now have the current value of your portfolio sitting at $11,354. So how have you done? How would you measure your return against the Indexes? PortTrak 2.0 uses a system of accounting for shares called Value Per Share (VPS) accounting. This is the same basic system that mutual funds use to account for their portfolios, which deal with constant inflows and outflows of money. It works like this: When you begin using PortTrak, you will be assigned an initial Value Per Share for your portfolio. We recommend starting with $25, but it really doesn't matter. If you begin your portfolio with $10,000 then, you will "own" 400 shares of your own portfolio valued at $25 per share, for a grand total of $10,000. Scenario 1: Your portfolio goes up 10% in value, and is now worth $11,000. Since you have 400 shares, each share is now worth $27.50 (10% above the $25 starting point). Scenario 2: You add $1,000 to your portfolio, which leaves your new grand total at $12,000, but you haven't increased your return at all. This new money goes to buy more "shares" at $27.50, adding 36.364 shares, for a total of 436.364 shares valued at $27.50. Since you measure portfolio performance based on the share price, you can see that adding this $1,000 cash did nothing to affect the share price, or the performance of your portfolio. Scenario 3: Your portfolio drops 5% in value. You will now own 436.364 shares worth $26.125 per share, for a grand total of $11,400. This is still up about 4.5% from where you started ($25 per share). Scenario 4: You remove $500 from your portfolio at $26.125 per share. This will take out 19.139 shares, leaving you with 417.225 shares, worth $26.125 each, for a grand total of $10,900. Note: You are still 4.5% up from your original investment of $25 per share, since adding and removing money does not affect performance. If this is at all confusing, just remember, it is a system designed to keep accurate track of your performance in a portfolio where cash may be moving in and out of it at irregular times and in irregular increments.
Consolidated/Separated Sheets On the Consolidated sheet, there is no date for the stocks, since it is really an aggregate of all purchases and sales in a stock. There is nothing you are able to change on the Consolidated sheet, since it draws all of its data from the Separated sheet. The Separated sheet shows more information, since it keeps track of each transaction separately. It includes a date of purchase (which you may change simply by clicking on it and changing it). The Separated sheet also shows you the annualized return for a given transaction. This feature does not work for the first 10 days that you own a new stock, since the annualized returns for even very small gains over a very short period of time are far too large to consider. On the Separated sheet, you are able to change the date of purchase and the amount of cash in your portfolio simply by clicking on these cells and changing them. Other information must be changed in less direct ways, through menu items under the PortTrak menu.
Charting Data
1) All dates must be continuous. You can not skip sections of dates along the left column. If you follow those simple rules, you can build back the charting data as far as you'd like, and you can alter whatever data there is whenever you'd like.
Graphs
The day you choose as the initial date of the graph, all of the values on the graph will be equal. What your graph is showing is how you have compared against the Indexes since "Day One" of your graph. It's a chart of percentage changes, not of raw values.
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What Kind of Fault What's that you say is wrong with PortTrak again? A Run Time Error? Is it telling you that it Can't Find the File? Oh, it Can't Find the Project or Library, huh? Or is it that you Can't Find the Download? That happens from time to time as well. In the end, if you find that nothing seems to help, then we've got Fools just waiting to answer your questions.
Run Time Error
1) If it happens while you are charting, you want to go back and make sure that there are no blanks and no zeros on your Chart_Info sheet If it happens at other times, you should take careful note of when it happens, and drop a note to our Technical Support Fools. he more information about exactly what you were doing when the error occurred, the easier it is for us to come up with a solution for you.
Can't Find File If you are unable for some reason to reinstall Excel, drop us a note and we'll walk you through some of the more difficult solutions.
Can't Find Project or Library
If you can't do this for some reason, drop us a note and we'll try to walk you through some of the other potential solutions to this problem.
Can't Find Download
If you can't see the file from Excel, but you know that it is there, then you probably need to tell Excel to find "All Files (*.*)" in the Open File Window. It should then be able to locate the file. Click here to return to the top of the page.
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