I have holdings at several brokerages. I don't want to have to log into each account to find out the value of each investment at every brokerage. So, I have a spreadsheet that retrieve prices and perform those calculations.Err....
Where do you draw the line on not trusting brokerages to tell you prices?
Do you also try to get independent prices for ETFs, mutual funds, and stocks, too?
It's more difficult to monitor TIPS or other individual Treasuries than an ETF like SCHP or LTPZ, since there are few free sources of price information. I also have a different way of calculating the current value of Treasuries than the brokerage, since I believe the market value displayed at the brokerage does not display the full amount that one would actually receive when selling it.
Since I don't want to pay for the convenience of using an ETF like LTPZ for TIPS, I've elected to put in effort to automate these calculations. When real TIPS yields fluctuate, the proportion of new contributions I allocate towards TIPS does as well.
I also use spreadsheets for other financial tasks that are harder to do. I have a spreadsheet that tracks every tax lot in my taxable accounts to alert me whenever I can tax-loss harvest. If I didn't figure out a way to export all the tax lots from my brokerage account, I'd be spending a lot of time updating my holdings, as Fidelity doesn't provide this functionality natively.
In any case, I think our discussion has been drifting from the topic of long TIPS yields, so I'll stop there. I understand that my way of tracking and managing one's portfolio in a spreadsheet with automated tools may seem like a lot of effort to set up, and is not for everyone.
Statistics: Posted by Lyrrad — Tue Nov 12, 2024 12:59 am — Replies 3736 — Views 905094