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Portfolio Performance terminology

This page provides an overview of fundamental concepts and terminology used in Portfolio Performance. Core concepts such as accounts, transactions, reporting periods, acquisition prices, and performance are described in dedicated chapters (see sidebar). Below, you will find a glossary describing all attributes (also referred to as fields or columns) that appear throughout various sections of Portfolio Performance. You will also find explanations of transaction types and field value descriptions.

Data Quality

These columns are found under Securities → All Securities:

  • Actual # Prices: Number of stored historical prices.
  • Expected # Prices: Number of expected historical prices, based on your calendar settings.
  • Missing # Prices: The difference between stored and expected historical prices.
  • Date of Last Historical Price: The date of the last downloaded historical price.
  • Date of First Historical Price: The date of the first downloaded historical price.
  • Completeness of Historical Prices: Describes the completeness of your historical price data. Minor deviations may arise due to regional holidays.
  • Absolute Performance: A value-based metric that evaluates total profit or loss of an investment over a given period:
    (Market value at end of period + Sales/Inflow + Dividends) - (Taxes + Fees + Starting value + Purchases/Inflow).
    Synonym: Total return.

Master Data

The central hub for your accounts, securities accounts, savings plans, and an overview of all transactions is found in the navigation sidebar.

  • Accounts: Store transactions related to business events or payment operations.
  • Securities Account (Depot): Contains the securities you currently own.
  • Reference Account: The account used to settle transactions. For example, when buying a security, the depot value increases and the reference account is debited. Conversely, when selling, the depot decreases and the reference account is credited.
  • Savings Plans: Overview of your savings plans, their execution intervals, and options to automate transactions.
  • Transactions: A consolidated view of all transactions across accounts. The list can be filtered.

Transaction Types

Commonly found in the context menu for accounts, depots, and securities.

  • Inbound Delivery: Acquisition of a financial instrument without settlement via the reference account.
  • Outbound Delivery: Sale of a financial instrument without settlement via the reference account.
  • Transfer: Moves a security between depots. Creates an outgoing transaction in the source depot and an incoming transaction in the target depot.
  • Deposit: Adds funds to Portfolio Performance for later use, e.g., to buy securities or monitor interest.
  • Withdrawal: Removes funds or cash. Affects your portfolio’s performance.
  • Buy: Acquires a financial product, debiting the reference account.
  • Sell: Sells securities, crediting the counter-account.
  • Dividend
  • Interest
  • Interest Charge
  • Taxes: Payment to the government with no direct service in return.
  • Tax Refund
  • Stock Split
  • Fees: Costs charged by service providers or brokers for executing transactions.
  • Fee Refund

Configurable Columns

  • Price Change (Period): Percentage difference between the last and first price over a chosen time span.
  • Price Change vs. Previous Day (Amount) or Δ Amount: Absolute difference between the last retrieved price and the previous one.
  • Price Change vs. Previous Day (%) or Δ %: Percentage difference between the last retrieved price and the previous one.
  • Price: The last traded price of a security.
  • Distance to SMA (Days): The percentage difference between the current price and the simple moving average (SMA) over X days.
  • Distance from All-Time High (ATH): Indicates how far the current price is from the highest price within a specified period.
  • Acquisition Price: The cumulative transaction value of all purchases (+) and sales (-) of a security within the reporting period.

Securities

  • Currency: The currency assigned to a security when created. Once a transaction is linked to a security, its currency cannot be changed.
  • Date: The date of a transaction.

Adding Stocks

  • Security: A tradable financial instrument like stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies, precious metals, etc.
  • Exchange: A security may be traded on multiple exchanges (e.g., NVIDIA: NASDAQ [NVDA] or XETRA [NVD.DE]).
  • Name: Initially taken from the data provider, but can be customized.

Exchange Rates

  • Inactive: A security can be marked inactive; it won't appear in transaction dialogs, and historical prices won’t update automatically.
  • ISIN (International Securities Identification Number): A unique 12-digit identifier used worldwide (especially by European brokers).
  • WKN (Wertpapierkennnummer): A 6-digit German identifier (largely replaced by ISIN).

Deposits and Withdrawals

  • Deposit: Adding funds to Portfolio Performance for later use, e.g., to purchase securities or monitor interest.
  • Withdrawal: Removing funds or cash. This impacts the portfolio's performance.

Dividends and Interest

  • Dividend: Profit distribution from a company to its shareholders. This amount is credited to the reference account.
  • Interest: Amount earned from capital investments (e.g., bonds or bank deposits).
  • Interest Charge: Costs for borrowed capital (e.g., loan or credit interest).

Taxes and Refunds

  • Taxes: Payments made to the government without direct compensation.
  • Tax Refund: Refund of taxes previously paid.

Fees and Fee Refunds

  • Fees: Costs charged by service providers or brokers for executing transactions.
  • Fee Refund: Refund of previously paid fees.

Purchases and Sales

  • Charge: Total cost of a purchase transaction, including taxes and fees.
  • Proceeds: Total amount realized from a sale transaction, minus taxes and fees. This amount is credited to the reference account.

General

  • Note: Allows adding comments to securities or transactions. Automatically filled when using the PDF importer but editable.
  • Units: The number of securities you own. Decimal units are referred to as fractional shares.
  • Symbol (Ticker): Identifier of a security, often combined with an exchange code.
  • Target Currency: Used to define conversion rates for currency exchanges.
  • Event: Lets you document events, which are visible in charts and detailed views (e.g., stock splits).
  • Watchlist: Create a customized list of securities with a configurable layout.
  • Widget: Build your own dashboards with charts and metrics to analyze, compare, and evaluate your portfolio.
  • Exchange Rate: Value of one currency relative to another.

Price Providers

  • Price Provider (Historical): Data sources for historical prices (Alpha Vantage, Bitfinex, Binance, CoinGecko, EOD Historical Data, Finnhub, Eurostat HICP, ECB SDW, Kraken, PWP Leeway UG, Twelve Data, Quandl, Table from Website, VIA/CS Funds, Yahoo Finance, JSON, or none).
  • Price Provider (Current): Data source for current prices (same list as above). Alternatively, use "same as historical prices".
  • URL (Historical): The source URL for downloading historical prices.
  • URL (Current): The source URL for current prices.
  • Return: Percentage change over a defined period.

Risk Metrics

  • Risk Metrics: Allow you to quantitatively assess the uncertainty of your investment (e.g., risk of total loss).
  • Maximum Drawdown: The largest decline from a peak to a trough in portfolio value during a period.
  • Maximum Drawdown Duration: The time between two portfolio peaks.
  • Semivolatility: Indicator of downside risk (negative return deviations).
  • Volatility: Indicator considering both positive and negative return deviations.

General Data

  • Currencies: Overview of ECB official exchange rates and a currency converter.
  • Settings: Create custom attributes (additional columns) or bookmarks.