PP-terminology

Fundamental concepts such as account, transaction, reporting period, purchase value, and performance are described in a separate chapter (see sidebar). Below is an alphabetical list containing descriptions of all attributes, also referred to as fields or columns, used in various sections within PP.

  • Absolute performance: a performance measure that assesses the overall gain or loss of an investment over a specific period; = (Market value at end of period + Sell/outbound deliveries + Dividends) - (Taxes + Fees + Initial valuation + Buy/inbound deliveries). Synonym: total return.

  • Account: Repository or container for storing financial information, such as cash transactions.

  • Actual # quotes: the number of quotes in the historic prices list of a security.

  • Amount: The Gross Amount of a transaction or the total amount of money before any taxes and fees.

  • Buy: transaction resulting in the acquisition of securities, where cash is withdrawn from a deposit account to purchase the desired stock.

  • Change in Price (period): the difference in historic quotes between the last and first quote of a specified time span, expressed as a percentage. The period may be denoted in years (e.g., 1 year, 2 years, 3 years) or as a date range (From yyyy-mm-dd to yyyy-mm-dd). If the duration is in years, the last date is today, and the first date is today minus x years.

  • Change on Previous Day (amount) or Δ amount: the absolute difference between the latest retrieved quote and the previous one (which is most likely the quote from the previous day).

  • Change on Previous Day (%) or Δ %: the difference between the latest retrieved quote and the previous one (which is most likely the quote from the previous day), expressed as a percentage.

  • Cash account: A financial account for holding and managing money.

  • Completeness of historic quotes: the ratio between the actual and expected number of historic quotes of a security, expressed as a percentage.

  • Currency: the currency for a security chosen at its creation, which becomes immutable after the initial transaction involving this security.

  • Date: The date of a transaction such as Buy or Sell.

  • Date of first historical quote: The first date for which you have historical prices of a security.

  • Date of last historical quote: The last date for which you have historical prices of the security. It's important to note that having these dates does not necessarily mean you have all intermediate historical prices.

  • Date of latest quote: the most recent date on which the current market value or price of a financial instrument, such as a stock, bond, or commodity, was publicly provided or updated.

  • Delivery (Inbound): a transaction where shares of a security are acquired without the need for a prior deposit and withdrawal of funds (comparable to a buy without a withdrawal).

  • Delivery (Outbound): a transaction where shares of a security are removed from the security account without a resulting deposit in a cash account (comparable to a sell without a deposit).

  • Deposit: Putting money in a deposit or cash account.

  • Deposit account: Repository or container for storing deposit/withdrawals and balances. Also named Cash account.

  • Distance to SMA (days): a metric that measures the difference between the current price (quote) of a share and the average price of that share over a specified number of past days (5, 20, 30, 38, 50, 90, 100, or 200 days), expressed as a percentage. The acronym "SMA" stands for "Simple Moving Average". For example, the average price of security for the last 5 daily quotes is (100 + 98 + 99 + 97 + 96)/5 = 98. The Distance to SMA (5 days) is (100-98)/98 = 2.04%.

  • Distance to ATH (period): a metric that shows how far the current price is from the highest price in the specified period (1 year, 2 years, 3 years or a date range From yyyy-mm-dd to yyyy-mm-dd). For example, the highest price of a security in the last year was 77.4 EUR. The current price is 71.96 EUR. So the Distance to ATH for a 1 year period is equal to (71.96 - 77.4)/77.4 or -7.03%.

  • Dividend: the distribution of a company’s earnings to its shareholders.

  • Exchange: a security may be traded on more than one exchange. For example, the NVIDIA stock is traded on Nasdaq (symbol NVDA, exchange NMS) or XETRA (symbol NVD.DE, exchange GER), and many more exchanges.

  • Exchange rate: the value of one currency in terms of another currency, determining the rate at which they can be exchanged.

  • Ex-date: used in stock split; date when a stock exchange first trades the (split) shares at the adjusted price.

  • Ex-dividend date: shareholders who owned their shares at least one full business day before the ex-dividend date will be entitled to receive a dividend. Sometimes also called the ex-date (see above).

  • Expected # quotes: given the nature and frequency of a security and the calendar in use, PP calculates the expected number of quotes for the time period between the Date of last and first historical quote. Weekend and holidays are taken into account.

  • Fees: Costs imposed by a service provider or intermediary for facilitating a transaction.

  • Gross Amount: Utilized when importing data, indicating the overall worth of a transaction, exclusive of fees and taxes. Gross Amount = shares x quote price or Value - fees - taxes. Also referred to as the Amount within the All Transactions view. This terminology may seem counterintuitive, as traditionally the gross value of an entity (such as your salary) is inclusive of taxes.

  • Historical prices: collection of closing quotes of a security; mostly daily.

  • Inactive: A security can be set to active or inactive. If set to inactive, the security will not appear in buy or sell dialogs, and historical prices will not be updated automatically.

  • Interest: the cost of borrowing money or the return earned on an investment; typically expressed as a percentage of the principal, which is the amount of money borrowed or invested.

  • Investment plan: An automated method to facilitate periodic transactions, such as deposits, withdrawals, interest payments, or purchases.

  • ISIN: International Securities Identification Number. This is a unique twelve-digit code that is assigned to every security in the world. Mostly used by European brokers & banks.

  • Latest Quote: the most recent quote of a security. You can refresh these values to the latest information using the menu option Online > Update Quotes.

  • Maximum Drawdown: Refers to the largest peak-to-trough decline in the performance of a portfolio or investment over a specific period, typically expressed as a percentage. It measures the extent of loss incurred from the highest point to the lowest point before a new peak is reached.

  • Maximum Drawdown Duration: The worst or longest amount of time an investment has been between peaks.

  • Name: the full name of the security according to the data source (see below) from which it is retrieved, e.g. Yahoo Finance.

  • Net Transaction value: the total sum of costs of a transaction, including the taxes and fees. This terminology may seem counterintuitive, as traditionally the net value of an entity (such as your salary) excludes taxes. (Net) Transaction Value = Gross Amount + Fees + Taxes. Also referred to as Value or Debit Note in the Buy transaction input form.

  • Note: Each security and transaction can be accompanied by a note for additional information or context.

  • Offset Account: In the context of buying or selling stock, the offset account is the account that is used to balance the transaction. When a security is purchased, the security account is increased, and the offset account, typically a cash account, is decreased to reflect the outflow of cash. Conversely, when a security is sold, the security account is decreased, and the offset account is increased to reflect the inflow of cash.

  • Purchase Value: the summed transaction value of each buy (+) and sell (-) transaction of a security, taken into account the reporting period.

  • Quote: The most recent price at which a security was traded, also known as the price.

  • Quote Feed (historic): data source or provider of the historic quotes: Alpha Vantage, Bitfinex Cryptocurrency Exchange, Binance Crypto Exchange, CoinGecko, EOD Historical Data, Finnhub, Inflation rate - Eurostat (HICP), ECB Statistical Data Warehouse, Kraken Cryptocurrency Exchange, PWP Leeway UG, Twelve Data, Quandl, Table on website, VIA/CS Funds, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Finance (Adjusted Close), JSON, no automatic download.

  • Quote Feed (latest): data source or provider of the latest quotes (same list as above) or could be set as "same as historical quotes".

  • Rate of return: the percentage change in the value of an asset over a given period of time.

  • Removal: Also named Withdrawal. Taking money out of a deposit account.

  • Reporting period: Time period that is used to calculate the performance of a security, account, or portfolio.

  • Risk: Refers to the possibility of losing some or all of the invested capital or not achieving the expected return from your investment.

  • Security: A tradable financial asset such as stock, bonds, bitcoin, gold, ...

  • Security account: Repository or container for storing securities.

  • Sell: transaction resulting in the removal of securities, and where cash is deposited in a deposit account as the equivalent value of the securities.

  • Semivariance: The variance of the negative fluctuations of an investment.

  • Source: data source used in File > New Security Search. Possible source are: Yahoo Finance provides financial news and data including stock quotes, press releases, and financial reports. CoinGecko is a website with real-time information on most cryptocurrencies. Portfolio Report is an open source project that aims to provide centralized portfolio performance data.

  • Shares: Units of ownership in a company or a financial asset. In the context of PP it refers to the number of shares one owns.

  • Symbol: the abbreviation (ticker) used by the data source.

  • Target Currency:

  • Taxes: Charges imposed by government authorities on certain financial activities.

  • Trade: The purchase and/or selling of a security. An open trade is created for each buying transaction and converted to a closed trade upon selling.

  • Transaction: an operation that alters the state of a portfolio.

  • Transaction type: classification of a transaction based on its nature and purpose within the portfolio, e.g. Buy, Sell, Dividend, ...

  • Type: In the context of the Security Creation Wizard: Share, Bond, Cryptocurrency, Aktie (German for stock or share), Währung (=German for currency), Futures, etf, fonds (= funds). In the context of the All Transaction table: Buy, Sell, Delivery (Inbound or Outbound), Dividend, Deposit, Removal, Interest, Interest Charge, Fees, Fees Refund, Taxes, and Taxes Refund.

  • URL (historic quotes): the URL that should be provided, if the choice in Quote Feed is set to Table on website or JSON.

  • URL (latest quotes): see above but for the latest quote provider.

  • Value: Utilized when importing data, indicating the overall worth of a transaction, inclusive of fees and taxes. Value = Gross amount + fees + taxes. Also referred to as the Net Transaction Value within the All Transactions view. This terminology may seem counterintuitive, as traditionally the net value of an entity (such as your salary) excludes taxes.

  • Volatility: Refers to the degree of variability in the returns of a portfolio over time. It is a measure of the risk or uncertainty associated with the portfolio's future performance.

  • Watchlist: manual grouping of securities.

  • Widget: A data block comprising a label and a numerical value or diagram, designed for placement on a dashboard.

  • WKN: Wertpapierkennnummer. A German six-digit alphanumeric code for the identification of a security, now replaced by the ISIN code.