The Total Return Report

The Total Return Report calculates how your individual investments have performed, including capital appreciation/loss and distribution payments.

Using your transactions the Total Return Report calculates the gains and losses on past and current holdings. Any distributions (dividends, capital gain payments or return of capital) received by the holdings are added to the gain/loss amount to arrive at the total return.

Each separate holding period for a particular security is represented as a line in the report. A holding period is any continuous period of time over which the security is in your portfolio. Over this time period, there may be additional purchases, partial sales and distribution payments which are included in the total return calculation. The holding period ends when the holding is completely sold (i.e. all shares are sold).

Filtering Your Holdings

You can filter which holdings are visible in the report by using the filtering tools to the right of the Report type selector.

  • Date Range - Allows you to limit the visible holdings to those that were held at any time during the specified time period. Specifically, any holding whose "Close Date" falls within the selected date range will be shown. Your current holdings will be included in the report if the ending date of the range is today or later.
  • There are a number of predefined date ranges (such as "2019", "2018", "Year-to-Date", "Last 30 Days", etc.
  • You can also specify a custom date range.
  • Symbols - Allows you to show only the holdings for certain, specific ticker symbols. You can select more than one ticker symbol.

  • Group by Symbol - When this option is selected, all holdings for a specific symbol will be grouped and summed together in one line. A grouped line will have a small arrow to the left of the ticker symbol. You can click the arrow to expand this line to view the individual holdings.
  • Use Average Cost Basis - The cost basis used to compute the gain/loss on sales will be done using the ACB method. You can read more about the ACB method and other cost basis calculations.

Other Report Actions

There are also 2 actions for the report:

  • Export to CSV... - This action will export a CSV file containing the current report. A CSV file can be opened in Excel, Numbers, LibreOffice Calc or other spreadsheet application.
  • Save as PDF... - This action will generate a PDF file containing the current report. PDF files are useful for archiving or printing a physical copy.

Notes on Trade Matching

The report matches buys with sells as part of the creation of a total return item. It does this either using the FIFO method (First In First Out) or by specific lots. Which method is used is determined by the sell transaction. If it is a simple "Sell", it is a FIFO sell and StockMarketEye will match the sell with the oldest purchase. If it is a "Sell Lot", the specific purchase that matches to this sell has already been selected.

For individual portfolios, the Total Return report will only match buys and sells from those that occurred within that portfolio.

In a Portfolio Group, however, there are 2 options for matching buys and sells - Combined Portfolio matching and Matching Portfolio matching. The default method, Combined Portfolio, means that a simple FIFO Sell transaction may match a purchase from any of the sub-portfolios of the Group. That is, a "Sell" from one portfolio may match a purchase from a different portfolio.

The Matching Portfolio strategy means that a FIFO Sell transaction will only match to a Buy from the Portfolio in which the Sell transaction occurred. No cross-portfolio matching will take place.

Notes on Return of Capital (RoC)

Return of capital (RoC) distributions reduce the cost basis of a holding and have been subtracted from the "CostBasis" column. RoC amounts are included in the "Distributions" (and "Distributions Other") column.

RoC does not affect the "Gain" amount shown in this report, since the "Gain" column is the capital appreciation/loss of the non-reinvestment positions without consideration of any RoC payments.

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