The Portfolio Manager is a tool that enables you to keep track of your favourite securities, your transaction history and your portfolio's day-to-day performance.
This service is completely free of charge. Stock quotes are provided in real-time for Premium Service users. For Public Service users, quotes are displayed with a 30-minute delay.
For security reasons, you will be automatically disconnected after 4 hours of idle connection.
The portfolio news page is regularly updated. It will keep you informed about new tools as well as developments underway. We therefore recommend that you consult this page regularly.
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1. Introduction
2. Registration 3. Security 4. My Profile 5. Account 6. Transactions 7. Charts 8. Downloading |
9. Buy/sell
10. Cash 11. Account Management 12. Options 13. WAP 14. Calculation details 15. Features 16. FAQ |
The Portfolio Manager enables you to create and manage your own virtual portfolio.
This portfolio may include different accounts (maximum 20, 100 for the Premium Service), where cash can be credited or debited and securities bought or sold. Short sales of securities are also possible.
The Portfolio Manager is Multi-Currency. You can open accounts in the currency of your choice, buy and sell securities on different stock markets (SBF, SIX Swiss Exchange, LSE, NYSE, etc...) , credit or debit cash in the currency of your choice and view results in a different currency. This gives you total freedom regarding the choice of currencies. The values are in reference to the default currency, which remains fixed. When you carry out a transaction in a currency other than the account currency, the exchange rate and the modification is stored in the memory for each transaction. With regard to the display currency, the exchange rate is determined by the market, and is therefore not modifiable.
The display currency is defined by default as the account currency, however conversion into any of the available currencies is possible at all times. All changes you make to the Portfolio Manager's settings are stored, so when you move from one account to another, your preferences are automatically taken into account.
The Portfolio Manager offers various possibilities to view your accounts: you may view a graphical representation of your portfolio's performance, its transaction history or download your accounts in a format enabling their processing with Excel-type software applications.
You can also change your user profile.
With these tools, you can fully manage your accounts!
You must register prior to using the Portfolio Manager. Click on the homepage's "New User" button and carefully fill out the registration form.
All fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory. None of your personal data will be made available to third parties without your express agreement.
All Swissquote services are independent. As a result, the passwords for your private account, the Forum and your personal page cannot be used for the Portfolio Manager. Please note that in Swissquote Premium, you can access your personal tools without having to re-identify yourself.
Carefully fill out the fields "Date of birth", "Question" and "Answer". This information will enable you to automatically recover your password or your username, in the event that you forget either one of these. If you have forgotten both your username and password, our search engine allows us to find the username(s) which correspond to your e-mail address. As a last resort, you can also send us the ad-hoc form and we will re-send you your username and password after verification.
Security is an important aspect of the Swissquote Portfolio Manager. The interface contains numerous security features such as encrypted databases, an enhanced identification process and automatic logout after 4 hours of idle connection to the service.
You have the choice of remaining anonymous or providing us with your personal data (essentially for statistical purposes). In any case, whatever the circumstance, no personal information shall be revealed to third parties. Transactions are recorded on a highly protected server, exclusively accessible to highly qualified Swissquote financial services employees.
Should you lose your password or even your access to the Portfolio Manager, use the "Access Problem" function. If you are still unable to recover your password, fill out the ad-hoc form and return it to us.
You can view and modify your user profile, change your password, e-mail, home address etc. Simply click the "My Profile" tab in the top right-hand corner of the Portfolio Manager homepage.
You may also choose the starting date of your Profit/Loss balance calculation. However, this starting date cannot be a Sunday. If you have erroneously chosen a date that corresponds to a Sunday, the system will automatically adjust it to the following day.
You may also choose the price display mode, either by using the last price paid, or by using the current purchase price (or sales price for a short sale). By default, we display the purchase price, as this value best corresponds to the price for which you can sell your security. The Profit/Loss and performance calculations also take into account the display mode chosen.
For the performance calculation, you also have two choices. The first choice (by default) consists of calculating the performance solely on the amounts invested, which means that the bank interest is not taken into account in the performance calculation, while dividends are. The second choice consists of comparing the profits and account holdings, which means that the addition or elimination of cash will influence performance.
To use the Portfolio Manager, you must create at least one account on the first page which appears after your successful registration. Simply enter the name of your first account, choose your account default currency and click the "Create" button.
Each portfolio may contain several accounts (up to 20 current accounts); each account may include up to 100 different securities (100 accounts and 500 securities for the Premium Service).
By activating a new session, you enter automatically into your account by default, the first account that you registered.
The "Account" page is the main page of the Portfolio Manager. It generates the current state of the account, the cash balance, the amount of securities in the portfolio, the Profit/Loss of the account, the account performance. This page automatically appears when you open a new session or when you create a new account.
This page displays the list of securities in the portfolio with their cost, their current value, the Profit/Loss by security, the daily variation, etc. You can choose yourself the columns that you want to see displayed. To do this, click on "Options" and choose your columns. The calculations are described in chapter 14.
From this "Account" page, you can move accounts, by selecting the desired account in the drop-down menu (upper left). You can also see a summary of all the accounts or create a new account by selection the "Account management" page, at the bottom of the drop-down menu. For more details, see chapter 11.
The Swissquote Portfolio Manager contains the full history of all your transactions. To access the transaction history, click the "Transactions" button. This page contains the records of all your transactions (purchases, sales, debits, credits and others). You may select all transactions made in the current week, month or year. You can also specify a specific time period by entering the limit dates of your choice in the "From...To" functionality.
You can conduct an overall search by selecting "ALL" in the drop-down menu. Click the "Search" button to launch your search. Searches can also be specific to either a given security available in the drop-down menu or to cash movements (debits, credits, dividends, interest).
You may modify a transaction by clicking on the transaction date. This link enables you to automatically access the data that was entered on the transaction's execution. You can modify the selected parameters by clicking "Modify", then return to the previous display by clicking "Back".
To delete a transaction, click on the letter "E" (which stands for "Erase") on the left of the transaction line. The transaction will then be placed in the wastebasket. You can view the wastebasket's contents by launching a search under the keyword "wastebasket" in the pull-down menu, in the same way that you would choose to display cash movements only. A deleted transaction can be recovered and restored if necessary. If you wish to permanently delete all transactions in your wastebasket, click on "Empty the wastebasket".
If you wish to restore a transaction from the wastebasket, simply go into the wastebasket using the drop-down menu and click on the letter "R" (which stands for "Restore").
Note: You will not be able to trade on Sundays. A weekday will be automatically selected.
The graphs display the performance of the securities held in the selected account. This can be represented in the following ways: Performance (default setting), Gains/Losses, Total Account, Total Securities and Individual Balances. The initial date for a graph corresponds to the initial date used to calculate Gain/Losses, but can be modified. The calculations also take into account any commission.
Information can be displayed either by chosen currency or by percentage.
The graphs a generated on a weekly basis.
You can download your data in .csv format (separated by semicolons), to enable you to open your Portfolio Manager in Excel.
The first line indicates the account name, date and time, the second line, the heading column. To use this option, please activate your Cookies.
This function downloads the values of the securities listed in the account irrespective of the page you might be browsing at the time. "Transactions" pages will download all transactions recorded on that account.
Please ensure that the parameters of your Excel program allow you to correctly open and read the generated file. For example, if you use a PC, go to "Start/Settings/Control Panel/ Regional Options/Numbers" and choose ";" as list separator.
To place a buy order, click "Buy", select your market (SBF, SIX Swiss Exchange, EUREX, Other, etc...), fill in all fields (all are mandatory except the "Commission" entry) and click the "Buy" button. Clicking on the word "Price" gives you the current sales price of the selected security.
Placing a sell order follows the same principle: Click the "Sell" button. By clicking on "Price", you may obtain the selected security's current purchase price. The quantity of securities that you hold will also be visible if you use this button.
We recommend that you initialise your account by crediting it with a cash position. In this way, you avoid negative values on your final balance. To virtually transfer cash to your account, click the "Cash" button. A new window appears, asking whether what kind of cash transaction you wish to carry out in your account. The current date is set, as the default date, as is the default currency for the transfer (default account currency), and you are requested to specify the amount to be transferred. You can also add a comment to the transfer.
The different cash transactions are: Credit, Debit, Dividend, bank interest and bond interest. The term "Debit" is the only transaction which subtracts money from your account. The only difference between the four other transactions is the performance calculation. In chapter 4 of My Profile, it is stated that there are two ways to calculate the performance and the Profit/Loss of the account. The first way calculates the performance compared with the amounts invested and the second calculates the performance compared with total holdings. It goes without saying that in the second case, the bank interest is included in the performance calculation, which is not the case for the first calculation method. Indeed, if you do not invest your money, but rather leave it in the bank, interest is included performance. It is worth noting that in this case, a modification of cash changes the performance, which is not the case for the first calculation method, which is set by default and which only takes into account amounts invested.
Accounts are managed by means of the drop-down menu located under the Portfolio Manager heading. This menu contains the list of all your accounts, as well as the two functions "Securities Distribution" and "Account Management". If, at the account level, you wish to conduct transactions such as the creation of a new account, the selection of another default account or the deletion of an account, simply proceed to the "Account Management" page.
"D"
To download your account, click on the letter "D" (which stands for "Download"). You can download your account in .csv format, e.g. in order to import into an Excel spreadsheet. The first line indicates the date and time, the second line is the column header and the separators between individual fields are semicolons.
"S"
To select another default account, click on the letter "S" (which stands for "Set by default"). The line of the default account is highlighted in dark orange. The selected default account remains the same in any subsequent session.
"C"
To display your past investment gains in a graphical format, click on the letter "C" (which stands for "Charts").
"E"
To erase an account, click on the letter "E- on the line of the account you wish to delete. The selected account will be moved to a wastebasket, enabling data recoverability. If you wish to completely delete an account that was moved to the wastebasket, select the wastebasket and click on the letter "E". This procedure totally deletes the selected account(s), definitely removing them from the wastebasket and your portfolio. Once fully deleted, an account cannot be reactivated, not even by one of our technicians. For security reasons, an alert window will appear, upon full deletion, requesting that you confirm your choice.
"R"
By selecting the wastebasket, you can not only terminate an account, but also restore it, by clicking on the letter "R" (which stands for "Restore"). The account will thus be retrieved and all calculations updated.
You also have the option of choosing your columns by clicking on the button "Option". A default choice is offered to you, but you can modify this scheme at any time. Your modifications are stored and updated for all of your portfolio accounts. If you have any ideas for additional columns or new calculations, you can send them to us by clicking the "Other Suggestions" button. The layout chosen will also be used for your e-mails.
These dynamic pages are found in the 3 pages: "Account", "Transactions" and "Account Management". Each of the selected columns is stored in the memory for the next time the page is opened.
You can also choose to sort your columns in ascending or descending order. Simply click the title of the column. Every click on the same column inverts the sorting. An arrow will indicate the selected column and the sense. The selected sorting will be saved. To return to the initial sorting, click the corresponding button next to the "Option" button.
A key to the selected options will be listed under the relevant table.
Your Portfolio Manager data is also accessible via your mobile phone on: http://wapsq.ch/
Please add this address to your favourites. You can also access Swissquote via the following platforms:
Swisscom (gomobile) > Thèmes > Finance > Autres Liens > Swissquote
Orange > Wap links > Finance > Swissquote
Sunrise > Finance > Swissquote
The column layout (see chapter 12) will mirror your website settings. Please note, WAP is a "read only" service ie. you can consult your data but you cannot change the parameters.
Cash Balance (in default and chosen currency):
The cash balance is the cash amount in the specified account on a given date.
Total securities' value:
The Total securities' value contains the current market value of securities held in the selected portfolio.
Total account value:
Cash Balance + Securities Value
Assets Gain/Loss:
Note: D-Day is the date you have chosen as a starting date for the calculation of your Profit/Loss balance.
The Profit/Loss balance represents the performance of the securities held in the selected account. The calculation can be performed from a specific starting date (defined in the profile). The default setting for this starting date is the date of user registration on Swissquote.
The calculation accounts for commission payments: the "Account Total" item includes commissions.
Account Performance:
The account's performance is measured in percentage terms on the basis of current account holdings (commission payments included).
Quantity:
Number of securities held
Cost:
Note: The cost calculation does not account for commissions paid.
This value represents the total average cost of all securities held in the account.
In the event of a sale, the new value is calculated by dividing the new quantity by the old quantity (rule of three):
In the event of a short sale, the total average cost refers to the account's sales. The resulting value is negative.
Purchases are adjusted by dividing the new quantity by the previous quantity.
Value:
Qty * Bid (Ask)
For securities in short position the Ask price is taken.
Commission:
Total commission on all transactions of the security in question.
Profit/Loss:
Quantity * Bid_price - Total Average Cost
The Profit/Loss value represents the difference between a security's current market value and its purchase price (without accounting for commissions).
For short positions the Ask price is taken.
Total Profit/Loss:
In the case of a short sale, the formula changes slightly:
The total Profit/Loss accounts for the entire profit gained on the security, taking into account the historical exchange rate between the purchase/sale currency and the security currency. This profit is displayed in the security currency.
Total Percentage Profit/Loss:
Total Profit/Loss*100/ (total purchases - total sales)
Daily Variation:
Quantity * (Previous Close – Bid_price)
This value quantifies the variation between a given security's current market price and its closing price on the previous day. The variation value is reversed in the event of a short sale and the Ask price is taken.
To view more details on a selected security, click on the corresponding symbol.
Average weighted exchange rate:
Total Profit/Loss in the display currency
Total Profit/Loss * exchange rate between the security currency and the display currency
The Swissquote Portfolio Manager is a simple, yet powerful tool to monitor your personal investments. This service enables you to:
Q: What happens if I transfer a cash position?
A: Nothing. We have designed the Swissquote portfolio system to be as similar as possible to real market conditions, but all transactions remain virtual, which means that no purchase or sale transaction actually takes place on the real market.
Q: I accidentally deleted my account. How do I recuperate my data?
A: Once it has been deleted, an account is placed in a wastebasket, where it is easily recoverable. To recover your account, select the wastebasket and click on the letter "R" (which stands for "Restore"). The data and calculations will be updated. However, if you delete the account from your wastebasket, it will be irrecoverably lost. Carefully read the warning messages before performing this action on your portfolio. The same principle applies for a transaction in the wastebasket.
Q: The daily variation does not correspond to that of the main site, is that correct?
A: The display of the security value, as well as the associated calculations, are based on the purchase price. This is more accurate than displaying the last price paid. If you wish to sell your securities, you will sell them at the purchase price and not at the last price paid. If you still wish to view the last price paid, like the main Swissquote site, you can change your profile by selecting "Last" in the section called "Display of prices". Please note that the performance will increase and will not reflect the real current performance of your account.
Q: Is it possible to transfer data from Trade directly into the Portfolio?
A: No, it is not possible due to data protection issues. The Swissquote Bank services and Portfolio Manager services are completely separate.
Q: In the "Account" page, the total (last line) of the columns "Tot. Cost", "Tot. Value", "Gain/Loss" and "Daily Change" does not correspond to the sum of each column's elements, why?
A: The total should effectively correspond to the sum of this column's elements, unless you have bought securities in another currency. If it is the case, you will note that each line is displayed in the security's currency. The sum, on the other hand, is calculated in the account currency, taken the exchange rate on the buying day into consideration for the "Tot. Cost" column and the exchange rate of the day for the other columns. To conclude, it appears evident that if you have securities in different currencies, the total of the columns will not correspond to the sum of each column's elements.
Q: How is a Portfolio performance calculated? The results are strange!
A: You can calculate the performance in different ways. In "My Profile", you can choose if you want the performance to be calculated in comparison with the invested amounts (sum of all buys) or with the total account assets (depends of the cash). By default, we have fixed it in comparison with the invested amounts, which is more logical for us. In "My Profile", you can also choose the initial date for the performance calculation. This one is fixed "by default" at the date of your account opening. Details of these calculations can be consulted at chapter 14.
Q: Why is the commission not included in the "Tot. Cost" column?
A: The column "Tot. Cost" represents the average buying cost on all transactions of the security. If you divide cost by quantity, you will be able to compare the average buying cost of your security, and compare it with the current price. If you add commissions, the comparison has no meaning. Moreover, if you make a partial sale, the average buying price per security is not changing. But if you take the commission into consideration, the average buying price does change due to the sale commissions. Only the assets Gain/Loss and the performance of the first table take commissions into consideration.
Q: I cannot open the file type .csv in Excel, why?
A: The file .csv contains your Portfolio data. Semi-colons separate the information. You should configure your Excel program settings in order to read your file correctly. If you are using a PC, please go in "Start/Settings/Control Panel/Regional/Options/Numbers" and choose ";" as list separator.
Q: Why is the "Daily Change" of portfolio securities different from the Swissquote website?
A: By default, we calculate and display values using the bid price and not the last paid price. It appears more correct for us because if you sell a security, you will sell it at the best bid price and not at the last paid price. If these calculations do not suit you, you can change it under "My Profile" choosing the last paid price for calculations and displays.
Q: I cannot read my e-mails; I receive strange, illegible characters, is this normal? What should I do?
A: E-mails sent in "HTML" format have to be encoded in MIME format (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions). Your email programme may not be able to read the latter format. There are two solutions: either change your e-mail software (use Outlook, Netscape, Eudora), or modify your settings by selecting "TEXT" format e-mails.