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The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
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Personal Finance / Macroeconomic Trends & Risks
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Author: OrmontUS   😊 😞
Number: of 4460 
Subject: Re: Building portfolio models
Date: 06/26/25 7:10 PM
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I'm pretty parallel to what you have, with a few differences. While I invest in a number of currencies (for decades) and part of the strategy involves consciously diversifying from the USD, I admit to being myopic and filtering down to a USD bottom line in the same way that I can convert to Celsius temperature and "fake it" when talking to non-US people, I still think in Fahrenheit (I guess in the same way that, regardless of how well one speaks a foreign language, mathematics is usually done in your native one).

I have always been intimidated by IB's Trader Workstation. I feel like a pilot who has been trained on Piper Cubs taking the stick of an F35. I know what I am supposed to be able to do, but I always feel like, for some reason, I'm always trying to get the wrong screen to do the right thing.

That said, the Google Sheets spreadsheet I use to manage my equity portfolio is populated in native currencies with consolidated assets from the two brokers I use for stocks. The columns I use are fairly mundane:

Ticker Symbol
Name
Morningstar rating
ValueLine rating
Buy Date
P/E ratio
Div. Yield %
Total Cost Basis
Number of Shares
Cost/Share
Current (real time) Quote
% Day Change
$ Day Change
Current Value of position
% Profit/Loss
Total Profit
Proportion of total portfolio
Dividend/Share
Total Annual Dividend of position
Sector
Country
Broker Account
Currency

The spreadsheet is more or less self-maintain (both from a currency and a share standpoint), with the exception of new buys, sales, DRIPs and so on. It is complete with boxes decorously turning green/red, etc., a separate sheet with pretty graphs and so on - idle hands are the Devil's workshop - which I rarely pay much attention to.

I have a separate Excel worksheet (not on-line) which lists assets including brokerage accounts, fixed instruments, bank accounts, etc. - all funneling down to a bottom line compared to the previous year's (embarrassingly in USD). I have saved the end-of-year spreadsheet for decades - both to pat myself on the shoulder as well as providing a time capsule of accounts dates and detail, should I ever have to track some legacy action down.

Jeff

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