Tracking sample (or virtual) portfolio

Brucee32789ywe3290

I recently went to professional advisor management for my investments. I transferred all the assets to the new firm, and the advisor sold all the various mutual funds that had made up the portfolio I had assembled over the years and created a new portfolio of stocks and mutual funds. I knew this was the plan and I am good with it. However, for comparison purposes, to see how the advisor is doing vs. what my DIY portfolio would have done, is there a way in Quicken to build and track the performance of a "sample" portfolio consisting of what my holdings used to be, including reinvestment of all dividends and capital gains, so I can compare what my previous portfolio would have done had I just kept it vs. the performance of my new professionally managed portfolio? I have Direct Connect set up on all the professionally managed accounts so I know I can track that performance perfectly. But how can I set up a "sample/virtual" portfolio of my old holdings that will track share price + reinvestment of dividends and cap gains without having actual accounts to download info, and without this sample portfolio counting towards my net worth etc. Sorry if I did not explain this well.
Thanks in advance.
Bruce

Jim_Harman

Unfortunately Quicken does not support virtual portfolios that automatically reinvest distributions.

You could create an account that has the correct holdings and enter the distributions manually. You can mark the account Separate so it does not affect your net worth and other reports. You would have to compute the distributions by multiplying the published distribution per share by the number of shares you hold. This might be easier to do with a spreadsheet.

Or if you have a paid subscription to Morningstar, you can set up the portfolio there and it will keep track of the distributions.

Boatnmaniac

You might want to search the Internet for Virtual Portfolio tools and see it there is a free one that might meet your needs.  Most of those tools, however, have restrictions of one sort or another, such as limited to exchange traded securities (i.e., stocks, ETFs) or investments offered by a specific brokerage.  You might also want to check out the brokerage(s) that you've worked with because some of them offer Virtual Portfolio tools.  I don't know if any of them will capture things like dividends but you won't know if you don't look into them.  One that I've been tempted to look into is https://www.investopedia.com/simulator/ .

q_lurker

If you do go after a third-party package, you will need to research how they compute performance for comparison to how Quicken is computing performance (Average Annual Return aka Internal Rate of Return, IRR).  Believe it or not, getting to an apples to apples comparison may be hard when you would think it would be fairly easy. 

A subtlety on that comparison -- you will likely want Quicken to provide you are a return figure after consideration of your advisor's management fee.  Quicken can do that if you expense those fees to a category checked as "Affects Investment Performance".    

Jim_Harman

Unfortunately Quicken does not support virtual portfolios that automatically reinvest distributions.

You could create an account that has the correct holdings and enter the distributions manually. You can mark the account Separate so it does not affect your net worth and other reports. You would have to compute the distributions by multiplying the published distribution per share by the number of shares you hold. This might be easier to do with a spreadsheet.

Or if you have a paid subscription to Morningstar, you can set up the portfolio there and it will keep track of the distributions.

Boatnmaniac

You might want to search the Internet for Virtual Portfolio tools and see it there is a free one that might meet your needs.  Most of those tools, however, have restrictions of one sort or another, such as limited to exchange traded securities (i.e., stocks, ETFs) or investments offered by a specific brokerage.  You might also want to check out the brokerage(s) that you've worked with because some of them offer Virtual Portfolio tools.  I don't know if any of them will capture things like dividends but you won't know if you don't look into them.  One that I've been tempted to look into is https://www.investopedia.com/simulator/ .

q_lurker

If you do go after a third-party package, you will need to research how they compute performance for comparison to how Quicken is computing performance (Average Annual Return aka Internal Rate of Return, IRR).  Believe it or not, getting to an apples to apples comparison may be hard when you would think it would be fairly easy. 

A subtlety on that comparison -- you will likely want Quicken to provide you are a return figure after consideration of your advisor's management fee.  Quicken can do that if you expense those fees to a category checked as "Affects Investment Performance".    

Brucee32789ywe3290

Thank you all for some very helpful answers/ideas. Yes, you would think it would be fairly easy, but like most things in life.... And yes thanks for that tip on "Affects investment performance" category. I recently had to enter the first round of fees and saw that and checked it.

[Deleted User]

@brucee32789ywe3290 - have you considered discussing this capability with your new advisor?  Neither one of you should be the least bit hesitant to discuss your money.  You pay them.  They should be working for you on your behalf.