Manual portfolios

A manual portfolio is one you build by hand. You record every deposit, withdrawal, buy, and sell, and the tracker derives your holdings, cash, cost basis, returns, dividends, and gains from that ledger. This page explains what a manual portfolio shows, how to read each figure, and how the holdings math works. Manual portfolios are available on the Free, Pro Lite, and Pro plans.

Before you begin

Sign in on a plan that allows portfolios. Manual portfolios are available on Free, Pro Lite, and Pro.
Create a portfolio first. For the steps, see Build your first portfolio.
The number of portfolios you can create depends on your plan. The current limits appear in the table on Plans and tiers.

Quickstart

Open a manual portfolio
Go to the portfolio page and select the portfolio you built by hand.
Record your transactions
Use Add Transaction to enter each deposit, withdrawal, buy, and sell. For a bulk backfill, select the CSV import option to add many transactions at once.
Review the holdings
Open the Holdings tab to see each position with its shares, average cost, current price, market value, cost basis, and unrealized gain.

What it shows

A manual portfolio surfaces your ledger across several tabs.

Holdings tab: each position with shares, average cost, current price, market value, cost basis, and unrealized gain.
Transactions tab: the full ledger of your deposits, withdrawals, buys, and sells.
Cash balance: uninvested cash, shown in the header.
Allocations: position and sector breakdowns of the portfolio.

Inputs

Add Transaction, Edit Transaction, and Delete Transaction, using the fields described in Build your first portfolio: Type, Symbol, Shares, Price, Amount, and Date, plus an optional fee and tax withheld.
A CSV import option to add transactions in bulk.
Edit Portfolio to rename the portfolio, change its description, set it as default, and adjust other settings.

Outputs and how to read them

Shares: how many units of a symbol you currently hold.
Average cost: your blended buy price per share, used as the cost basis.
Current price and market value: the latest end-of-day price and shares times that price.
Cost basis: shares times average cost, which is what you paid for the shares you still hold.
Unrealized gain: market value minus cost basis, the paper profit on your current holdings.

How it is calculated

Three figures drive the Holdings tab: your current share count, your average cost, and the resulting market value and unrealized gain.

Current shares per symbol

Your share count is the running result of your trades: buys add shares and sells remove them.

shares = sum of buy shares − sum of sell shares

Here shares is the net unit count for a symbol. For example, a buy of 100, a buy of 50, and a sell of 30 leave 120 shares. Manual portfolios are long-only, so a symbol whose net count falls to zero or below is dropped from holdings. Short positions are not supported.

Average cost

Average cost is a buy-weighted average of your purchase prices. Sells do not change it.

average cost = sum of (buy shares × buy price) / sum of buy shares

In this formula, buy price is the price per share at purchase in US dollars. For example, buying 100 shares at 10 and 50 shares at 16 gives (1,000 + 800) divided by 150, which is 12.00. Because sells never adjust average cost, this figure always reflects your full buy history, not only the shares you still hold.

Market value and unrealized gain

Market value is today's worth of a holding, and unrealized gain is the paper profit on it.

market value = shares × current price; cost basis = shares × average cost; unrealized gain = market value − cost basis

Here current price is the latest end-of-day close in US dollars. For example, 120 shares at a price of 20 with an average cost of 12 give a market value of 2,400, a cost basis of 1,440, and an unrealized gain of 960. If a symbol has no price history yet (a brand-new ticker), the price falls back to your average cost, so the holding shows zero unrealized gain until prices arrive. These figures recompute when you change the ledger and on the daily data refresh, so they move once per trading day.

Data and timing

Holdings and cash are computed from your ledger. Prices are end-of-day from AlphaVantage (Nasdaq quotes delivered through AlphaVantage). Everything recomputes when you change the ledger and on the daily data refresh.

Use cases

Track a real brokerage account you prefer to update by hand.
Keep a watch-only model of trades you are considering.
Import historical trades by CSV to backfill a portfolio.

Limitations and disclosures

Accuracy depends entirely on the transactions you record. Average cost reflects your full buy history, holdings are long-only, and prices are end-of-day rather than live.

GNG Research provides equity research and educational tools, not investment advice. Nothing on the platform is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Do your own research and consider your circumstances before making any investment decision.