Creating Linked Portfolios

Let’s start with an explanation of a what a linked portfolio is. A linked portfolio is a portfolio in Stock Rover that is “linked” to a portfolio in your brokerage account. When you create a linked portfolio, a read-only connection is established between your brokerage account and Stock Rover.

You don’t need to constantly update linked portfolios with brokerage changes as changes to your brokerage portfolio’s holdings are regularly synchronized with a linked portfolio in Stock Rover. In addition to being updated nightly, an update for any brokerage can be initiated by your request from within Stock Rover.

Portfolios that are linked will show with a different icon. Here we a see a portfolio linked to Fidelity Brokerage. We manage linked portfolio connections via Brokerage Connect. Brokerage Connect can be quickly accessed under ”Portfolio Tools” or when we select “Portfolios” we can click on “Create New Portfolio” or under “Portfolio Actions” click on “Create a New Portfolio”. We can then click on “Connect to your brokerage”

Stock Rover connects to your brokerage firm via Yodlee, a trusted cloud-based account aggregator. Stock Rover never sees your account credentials and has no access to brokerage accounts.

Please note that for Interactive Brokers, Stock Rover has a separate linking procedure. The linking is done via a Stock Rover feed request to Interactive Brokers. The details can be found in the help.

When a connection has been verified, you’ll see the Brokerage Connections panel in Stock Rover with your portfolios from the linked account loaded. The panel is organized with your brokerage account at the top along with the constituent portfolios listed under it. In our case we have a single portfolio.

Clicking on the gear icon reveals configuration options. As you hover over a portfolio, you’ll see a gear which can be clicked for menu options that pertain to that individual portfolio.

Let’s link to a brokerage account.

For major brokerage houses, we recommend using the links provided on the Yodlee search screen. For anything not covered in this list, simply use the search box.

We’ll select Vanguard.

Remember, only Yodlee interacts with your account credentials and institutions –Stock Rover never sees or handles account credentials.

You’ll then follow the prompts to enter your account login information, the prompts usually consist of user and password, but will vary depending on your brokerage’s security requirements. For example, if you’ve multi-factor authentication enabled, you will be prompted for a code.

Once the connection has been verified, you will see the Brokerage Connections Panel in Stock Rover with your portfolios from the linked account loaded.

First Time Brokerage Connection

Let’s talk a bit about what happens when you first connect to your brokerage.

When a connection is first established, the brokerage returns the positions as of the moment you connected. The positions for each holding usually come over with a quantity and a cost per share. As the buy date isn’t known the buy date will be the date you connected to brokerage.

The brokerage does not return buy and sell history. As we’ll see in a bit you can import your brokerage’s history so that the brokerage portfolio and the linked portfolio match. If the cost per share isn’t provided by brokerage, we use the current price and you then can make a one-time correction.

Here we see a linked portfolio with an initial connection date of December 19th 2023.

To launch the Portfolio Manager, we can either select “Modify This Portfolio” under “Portfolio Actions” or right-click on the portfolio and select “Modify Portfolio”.

In the positions tab you can edit the cost per share. Once you made your changes, you’ll want to click on “Save”. Again, going forward any changes in your brokerage will be synchronized with your linked portfolio.

Backcasting

When a connection is first established via Brokerage Connect, the current holdings are returned with no buy and sell history. The buy date is set to the date of the initial connection.

Backcasting allows Stock Rover to show the portfolio performance as if the holdings were owned since the earliest date supported in Stock Rover.

This feature makes it possible to analyze your portfolio and to view the historical performance prior to the to the date of the initial connection. Backcasting works well when a portfolio hasn’t changed or has experienced minimal change prior to the first time connection data.

If a portfolio has changed a lot prior to first-time connection date, backcasting can be turned off and you can import position history for a more complete accounting.

When a linked portfolio is created the backcasting feature is enabled by default. We can see this in the Portfolio Manager. To launch the Portfolio Manager, we can click “Modify this Portfolio” under “Portfolio Actions” or right-click on the portfolio and select “Modify Portfolio”.

In the “Positions” tab, selecting “Explain” shows us a brief explanation and also allows us to enable or disable backcasting for the selected portfolio.

Let’s go to the Analytics. We’ll select our portfolio. Here we see the performance of our portfolio going back 2-years, even though the buy date is December the 19th 2023.

Importing Past Position History

Going forward, changes in your brokerage portfolio are mirrored into the linked portfolio. Buy and sell transactions are inferred based on the change in positions.

If you would like the Portfolio Analytics to account for position changes previous to the date that the brokerage connection was established, you will need to import past position history.

You will be importing files that each contain all the positions from a monthly or quarterly brokerage statement. As Stock Rover’s portfolios are positions based It is important that these import files contain all portfolio positions. For example, if the file being imported only contains a subset of your actual holdings, then Stock Rover will assume the missing holdings were sold.

You will want to import the files starting with the oldest brokerage statement and then move forward chronologically. Each time you import a file, Stock Rover will adjust your portfolio positions and infer the appropriate buy and sell transactions.

To import our updates, we’ll want to launch the Portfolio Manager. We can either click ”Modify the Portfolio” under “Portfolio Actions” or right-click on the portfolio and select “Modify Portfolio”.

When we click on the Transactions tab, we see that Stock Rover inferred the buys with a buy date of December 19th. This is the initial connection date to the brokerage.

Let’s import portfolio history. We’ll select the Positions tab. We’ll start with an export of our earliest brokerage statement from June of 2023. So, we want to set our import date to June. Let’s select our file to import. We see that we own Apple, Google and Exxon-Mobile. We also see their quantity, and the cost per share. Note if the brokerage doesn’t return the cost per share, Stock Rover will use the close price. Let’s import.

Let’s go to our next brokerage statement. Let’s change the date and we’ll go to the end of September. Let’s select our file to import. Here we see new positions for Meta and Microsoft. but we no longer have a position in Exxon-Mobile. Let’s import.

Let’s go to the Transactions tab. Here can see the transactions that were inferred based on our changes in position. So we can see when we purchased Meta, Microsoft, Apple, and Google .. and we can see when we bought Exxon-Mobile and when we sold Exxon-Mobile.

When we go to the “Postions” tab we see Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft.

Assets

When Stock Rover updates a Linked Portfolio with position data from your brokerage, the tickers are verified to make sure that they can be priced. If a position cannot be priced, then the ticker is classified as an “Asset”.

Assets help you distinguish between tickers that are included in Stock Rover’s research and analytics and those that aren’t.

An Asset will typically be classified as a Mutual Fund, a Stock, a Bond, or an Option, but there are also many other classifications. such as real estate or commodities.

If your Portfolio contains assets, they will be listed in the Table under “Assets”. When we click on “Assets” we get more detail. Here we see a Fidelity 529 College Savings Plan, which is not traded on any exchanges.

If we go to the Portfolio Manager, either via “Modify this Portfolio” or right-clicking and selecting “Modify Portfolio”. We’ll see that the assets are listed at the end of the alphabetical list of positions.

Getting Help

For help on creating a linked portfolio via Brokerage Connect under your username select “Help”. Scroll down and select “Brokerage Connect”.

Here you’ll find well documented Brokerage Connect help organized by topic.

Summary

I hope you found the video useful. I encourage you to explore Stock Rover and see all that is has to offer, as well as check out our other educational videos on our website. Thank you for watching.

Creating Linked Portfolios

Introduction