Thanks to all of you who wrote to me following my column on the inadequacy of platform tools for measuring investment performance (IC, 4.02.22). Nearly everyone who wrote in monitors their portfolios' performance via their own spreadsheets, logging investment decisions and comparing returns against a chosen benchmark.
One reader, who uses Hargreaves Lansdown and interactive investor, updates the spreadsheet on a monthly basis factoring in cash added to or withdrawn over the month. He is content to ignore the time value of inflows as he does not believe that this makes a big difference.
Another reader works out the profit and loss of each of his holdings for the previous year, including dividends received, at the start of every year. “This helps to highlight the decisions I made during the year,” he says, adding that it can take him a day or two so it would be good if there was a better tool with which to track performance.