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How and why I track my Selfwealth trades with Sharesight

by Emily Grunberg, Product Marketing Manager, Sharesight | Feb 9th 2021

About a year ago I started using Selfwealth as my primary online broker after using a number of other brokers in the past. Because details of my trades are scattered across multiple brokers, this makes Sharesight essential for tracking my performance and tax.

With Sharesight I can keep track of my investments from all my brokers, dividend earnings, dividend reinvestment plans (DRPs), and easily see the performance across all my listed and unlisted investments. Here’s how I do this.

Why I track my Selfweath trades with Sharesight

How I track my Selfwealth trades with Sharesight

Getting the trades I make with Selfwealth into my Sharesight portfolio is a simple process which involves Selfwealth forwarding a copy of my trade confirmation emails to my Sharesight portfolio email address. It’s all done behind the scenes, and I only had to set this up once for all my future trades to flow into Sharesight.

In case you are like me and have tried out several different brokers in your investing journey, Sharesight allows you to keep your portfolio up-to-date automatically by supporting trade confirmation emails for hundreds of brokers from around the world. This is how I have synced the trades I made with my previous brokers with my Sharesight portfolio.

It is extremely satisfying to place a trade and then see it appear in my Sharesight portfolio automatically, it saves me so much time on portfolio admin. It also gives me peace of mind knowing that it’s automatically taken care of, and I have one less thing to worry about.

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Why I track the performance of the investments I make via Selfwealth with Sharesight

I’m really happy to trade with Selfwealth and don’t plan on switching to a different broker. They charge very reasonable brokerage fees for a CHESS sponsored broker, and I find their platform straightforward and modern. To track my performance on the other hand, I insist on using Sharesight.

Why don’t I just track my performance on Selfwealth you might ask? As a self-directed investor, I’ll give you a few examples of important data that I need incorporated into my return figures that most brokers don't give you.

Dividend income
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth N	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters For some investors, dividend income can be a significant part of their overall return, and with Sharesight your dividends are tracked automatically and captured as a percentage of your total return.
Dividend reinvestment plan (DRP) & DRP residual balances
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth N	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters Dividend Reinvestment Plans are a challenge to stay on top of. When your payouts aren’t purchasing a whole number of shares, you also need to keep track of your residual balances. Sharesight allows you to track your DRPs automatically for the ASX and NZX, and manually on other markets.
Brokerage costs
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth Y	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters Brokerage fees are important to consider when calculating your performance because they can eat away at a significant part of your returns.
Currency fluctuations
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth N	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters Most brokers who allow you to trade in foreign markets will require you to transfer your local currency to a foreign currency, and therefore you lose the impact the currency movements will have on your overall returns. Sharesight translates everything into your base currency allowing you to see the impact of currency fluctuations on your performance.
Corporate actions such as share splits and consolidations
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth N	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters When there is a share split or consolidation, your broker will typically continue to calculate your return using the original price you paid multiplied by the new number of shares. In a 1:2 share split (i.e. 1 share becomes 2), this would result in your purchase price doubling.
The size & timings of your trades and annualised returns
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth N	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters Most brokers only report on the difference between the average price you paid for your investment and the current price. This simple figure doesn’t tell you the impact of the timing of your investment decisions on your returns. By annualising returns, Sharesight gives investors a means to compare the relative performance of one investment to another regardless of how long they’ve been held.
Tracking performance from multiple brokers
Included or considered in return figures?
Selfwealth N	Most Brokers N	Sharesight Y
Why this matters Your broker will only provide basic performance reporting for the shares you purchased through them. Even when you transfer shares you purchased with brokers you’ve used in the past, only the quantity you own is transferred. This makes it impossible for your broker to calculate performance, and why it’s so important to use Sharesight to see the complete picture of your investment performance.

My Sharesight routines

I sign in to Sharesight every day the markets are open, and most of the time this includes a quick glance at the Performance Index Graph and my return figures on the Portfolio Overview page. I do this for my own portfolios, and also portfolios that have been shared with me by family members.

Once in a while, when I am interested in a specific period of time, I will visit the old faithful Performance Report.

When I receive a dividend, I log in to Sharesight to confirm the details and upload relevant documents which I will go into more detail in the last section.

At tax time I am able to use the Capital Gains Tax Report and Taxable Income Report to help me with filing my Australian tax return.

Bye bye paperwork

During my short investing journey, I’ve used 4 online brokers, 3 ETF providers, and 2 share registries. The amount of paperwork I receive in the mail is overwhelming, and until recently I would keep this ever growing pile of papers in a drawer.

I finally decided to stop this madness. I began snapping a photo of these papers using my mobile phone, uploading them to Sharesight, and then physically recycling them.

In addition to my paperwork, I do the same with my email attachments. This makes life so much easier to have everything in one place. No need to sort through my piles of papers, and no need to log into my share registries or brokers to locate missing documents.

Thousands of investors like you are already using Sharesight to manage their investment portfolios. What are you waiting for? Sign up and:

Track all of your investments in one place, including stocks, mutual/managed funds, property and even cryptocurrency
Automatically track your dividend and distribution income from stocks, ETFs and mutual/managed Funds
Run powerful reports built for investors, such as Performance, Portfolio Diversity, Contribution Analysis and Future Income (upcoming dividends)
See the true picture of your investment performance, including the impact of brokerage fees, dividends, and capital gains with Sharesight’s annualised performance calculation methodology