Portfolio Tracking: The Complete Guide to Monitoring Your Investments

Most investors do not know their real returns. Not approximately. Not roughly. They genuinely do not know whether their portfolio has beaten inflation over the past five years, or how much they have lost to currency fluctuations, or what percentage of their gains has been eaten by fees they forgot they were paying.

This is not because they are careless. It is because portfolio tracking is deceptively hard. A single brokerage account denominated in a single currency with a handful of index funds is straightforward. But the moment you add a second brokerage, a retirement account in another country, some crypto, a property, or investments in a different currency, the picture fragments. Your US broker shows one number. Your European platform shows another. Your crypto exchange shows a third. None of them talk to each other, and none of them show you the complete picture.

This guide is for investors who want to fix that. Whether you hold assets in one currency or ten, in one country or five, this is a practical walkthrough of what to track, how to track it, and which tools actually work. It is written especially for international investors, expats, and digital nomads whose financial lives span multiple countries and currencies, but the principles apply to anyone who takes their investments seriously.

Why Portfolio Tracking Matters

Portfolio tracking sounds like bookkeeping. Something you should probably do but can safely ignore if your investments are generally going up. This is wrong, and the cost of not tracking properly compounds over time in ways that are difficult to see until you finally measure them.

Knowing Your Real Returns

The number your brokerage shows you is not your real return. It is the return on the assets held in that specific account, denominated in that account’s currency, and it typically excludes the fees you paid, the tax drag on your dividends, and the impact of currency movements if you earn or spend in a different currency.

Your real return is what your portfolio actually did for your purchasing power. A portfolio that returned 10% nominally might have returned 6% after fees and taxes, and 3% in real terms after inflation. If the currency it is denominated in fell 5% against your home currency, your actual purchasing power gain was closer to negative 2%. That is a very different story from “up 10%.”

Understanding Your Actual Asset Allocation

Without proper tracking, your asset allocation is a guess. You might think you are 60% stocks and 40% bonds, but when you add up the retirement account you have not checked in two years, the company stock options that vested last quarter, and the cash sitting in three different bank accounts in two currencies, the real allocation could be 75% equities with almost no fixed income. This kind of invisible drift changes your risk profile without you noticing.

Measuring Fee Drag

Fees are the one variable in investing that is entirely within your control, and they compound just as relentlessly as returns do. A 1% annual fee on a $100,000 portfolio costs you roughly $30,000 over 20 years in direct charges alone, and significantly more in lost compounding. But fees are spread across fund expense ratios, platform charges, FX conversion spreads, and advisory fees. Without a consolidated view, you cannot see the total fee drag, and you cannot make informed decisions about where to cut.

The Cost of Not Tracking

The cost shows up as missed rebalancing opportunities, excessive concentration in a single asset or sector, unnoticed fee increases, tax-loss harvesting opportunities you never saw, and currency exposure you did not intend to take. For international investors, the currency dimension alone can add or subtract double-digit percentage points from annual returns. If you are not tracking it, you are not managing it.

What to Track

There is a difference between tracking your positions and tracking your performance. You need both.

Positions: What You Own Right Now

Position tracking is the snapshot — what assets you hold, in what quantities, at what current value. At minimum, it should cover:

Performance: How Your Investments Are Doing Over Time

Performance tracking is the time series — how the value of your portfolio has changed, why it changed, and whether those changes beat the alternative. This requires:

Asset Allocation and Exposure

Beyond individual positions and performance, you need a higher-level view of your portfolio’s structure: asset class allocation, geographic exposure, sector concentration, and currency exposure. Two portfolios can have identical total values but completely different risk profiles based on their allocation. For more on currency exposure specifically, see How Currency Exchange Rates Affect Your Investment Returns.

Portfolio Tracking Methods

There are three main approaches to portfolio tracking, and most investors eventually try all of them before settling on the one that fits.

Spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are where most investors start, and for simple portfolios, they work. You control every formula, every cell, and every layout. For a portfolio of five to ten positions in a single currency, a well-built spreadsheet can be an excellent tracking tool.

The problems emerge as complexity grows. Spreadsheets do not update automatically in any reliable way. GOOGLEFINANCE breaks regularly, returns stale data, and has no SLA. There is no historical price database, so tracking performance over time requires manual snapshots. Formula errors are silent and cumulative.

For multi-currency portfolios, spreadsheets become actively dangerous. As described in How to Track Investments Across Multiple Currencies, the combination of live FX rates, historical FX rates, and conversion logic for every position quickly becomes unmanageable. A spreadsheet with eight currencies and thirty positions is not a tracking tool — it is a full-time maintenance project.

Best for: Single-currency portfolios with fewer than ten positions, or as a temporary solution while evaluating dedicated tools.

Brokerage Dashboards

Every brokerage platform includes some form of portfolio tracking. The primary limitation is scope: a brokerage dashboard tracks what you hold at that brokerage, not your total portfolio. If you have accounts at three brokerages plus a retirement account plus some crypto, you are looking at four or five separate dashboards that each show a fragment. There is no consolidated view, no total asset allocation, and no unified performance calculation.

Best for: Investors with everything at a single brokerage, or as a source-of-truth for individual account values that feed into a broader tracking system.

Dedicated Portfolio Trackers

Dedicated tracking tools solve the consolidation problem. They pull together holdings from multiple accounts — through manual entry, CSV import, or direct API connections — and present a unified view. The best ones provide multi-currency support, multiple asset class coverage, proper performance calculations, asset allocation analysis, and historical tracking.

The trade-offs vary by tool. Some require you to share brokerage credentials. Some only support specific countries or brokerages. Some calculate performance incorrectly. And pricing ranges from free open-source tools to $30+ per month.

Best for: Anyone with investments spread across multiple accounts, currencies, or asset classes. If you have outgrown a spreadsheet and your brokerage dashboard does not show the full picture, a dedicated tracker is the next step.

When to Graduate

The trigger is usually one of these: you have more than one brokerage account and want a consolidated view, you hold investments in more than one currency, you want to track performance over time, or you spent more time maintaining your spreadsheet last month than actually reviewing your investments.

Choosing a Portfolio Tracker

The portfolio tracking market has grown significantly, and the tools vary widely. Here are the features that matter most.

Multi-Currency Support

For international investors, this is the single most important feature. Genuine multi-currency support means you can hold assets in any currency, the tool converts to your home currency using accurate rates, historical performance uses the FX rates from the time, and you can see how much of your return came from currency movements versus asset performance.

Many tools claim multi-currency support but implement it superficially — converting everything to USD at today’s rate, which makes historical performance meaningless. Or they support five major currencies but not the Thai baht or Czech koruna you actually need.

Manual and Automatic Entry

Some investors want direct brokerage sync. Others prefer manual entry for security or because their brokerages are not supported. The best tools support both. Automatic sync via Plaid and Yodlee is primarily designed for the US market — if your brokerages are in Europe or Asia, it may not be available. Manual entry is slower but gives you complete control, especially when paired with CSV import.

Asset Class Coverage

Your portfolio probably is not 100% listed securities. A good tracker handles real estate, crypto, private equity, and other non-traded assets through manual valuation or data integrations.

Performance Calculation Methodology

The methodology a tool uses determines whether the numbers are meaningful. Time-weighted and money-weighted returns answer different questions and can produce very different numbers for the same portfolio. If a tool just shows “return: 12%” without specifying how it was calculated, treat it with skepticism. See the performance metrics section below.

Cost

Pricing ranges from free open-source tools to $40+ per month. Free tools often have limitations in currency support or accuracy. The sweet spot for most international investors is a paid tool in the $10-$20/month range that handles multi-currency properly and covers all their asset types.

Portfolio Tracker Landscape

The market for portfolio tracking tools has expanded significantly. Here is a high-level overview organized by category. For detailed head-to-head comparisons, see the linked comparison pages.

All-in-One Net Worth Trackers

These tools track your total financial picture — investments, bank accounts, property, crypto, and liabilities — in a single dashboard.

Kubera is focused on net worth tracking across all asset types with strong multi-currency support. Its pricing is higher than many alternatives. See FlashFi vs Kubera for a detailed comparison, or Kubera Alternatives for other options in this category.

Empower (formerly Personal Capital) combines portfolio tracking with financial planning tools. It handles USD-denominated portfolios well but multi-currency support is limited. See FlashFi vs Empower and Empower Alternatives.

Monarch Money offers budgeting alongside investment tracking — a good fit for investors who want both in one place. Primarily US-focused. See FlashFi vs Monarch Money.

Finary is European-focused with strong support for EU brokerages and multi-currency handling. See FlashFi vs Finary.

Investment-Focused Trackers

These tools prioritize investment analytics — performance metrics, asset allocation, dividend tracking — over broader financial management.

Sharesight is well-established in Australia and New Zealand, with strong tax reporting and proper performance methodology. See FlashFi vs Sharesight and Sharesight Alternatives.

Simply Wall St focuses on stock analysis and portfolio visualization with distinctive snowflake charts. More analysis tool than comprehensive tracker. See FlashFi vs Simply Wall St.

Snowball Analytics focuses on portfolio analytics with a clean interface and strong charting. See FlashFi vs Snowball Analytics.

Getquin offers social features alongside portfolio tracking, popular in Europe. See FlashFi vs Getquin.

International and Expat-Focused Trackers

Exirio is built for internationally mobile investors with strong multi-currency support. See FlashFi vs Exirio.

Strabo targets a similar audience with a focus on multi-currency wealth tracking. See FlashFi vs Strabo.

Portseido offers portfolio tracking with a focus on the Asian market. See FlashFi vs Portseido.

Budgeting Tools with Investment Tracking

YNAB is a budgeting tool that can track investment account balances but is not designed for performance tracking. See FlashFi vs YNAB.

Copilot Money is an iOS-focused financial app combining spending tracking with investment oversight. See FlashFi vs Copilot Money.

Lunch Money is a budgeting tool with crypto support and a developer-friendly API. See FlashFi vs Lunch Money.

Crypto-Inclusive Trackers

Delta started as a crypto tracker and expanded to cover traditional investments. Strong crypto exchange integrations. See FlashFi vs Delta.

Self-Hosted and Open-Source Options

Ghostfolio is an open-source portfolio tracker you can self-host. Requires technical setup but keeps all data on your own infrastructure. See FlashFi vs Ghostfolio.

Wealthfolio is a desktop application that stores data locally. See FlashFi vs Wealthfolio.

Regional Specialists

Wealthica focuses on the Canadian market with strong support for Canadian brokerages and tax accounts (TFSA, RRSP). See FlashFi vs Wealthica.

What Is Missing from Most Trackers

Most trackers are built for a single market and struggle when your financial life spans multiple countries. Multi-currency support is often an afterthought. Few tools properly attribute returns to asset performance versus currency movements. And the tools that handle international portfolios well tend to be expensive.

This is the gap that FlashFi was built to fill — a multi-currency portfolio and net worth tracker designed for international investors, with proper FX handling, manual entry that works for any brokerage in any country, and pricing that does not scale with your wealth. For a look at how other platforms compare to Mint’s now-discontinued service, see Mint Alternatives.

Understanding Performance Metrics

Performance metrics are the language of portfolio tracking, and using the wrong one gives you the wrong answer.

Time-Weighted Return (TWR)

Time-weighted return measures the performance of your investments independent of when you added or withdrew money. It answers the question: “How well did my chosen investments perform?”

TWR breaks your portfolio’s history into sub-periods defined by cash flow events, calculates the return for each, and links them geometrically. The result reflects investment performance without being distorted by the timing and size of your contributions. This is the industry standard for comparing investment managers and fund performance.

When to use TWR: Comparing your portfolio to a benchmark, evaluating whether your investment selections are good, and comparing your results to other investors.

Money-Weighted Return (MWR)

Money-weighted return — also called internal rate of return (IRR) — measures your personal experience of investing. It accounts for when you added money and how much. If you invested $10,000 and the market dropped 20%, then added $90,000 right before a 30% rally, your MWR would be very high because most of your money benefited from the rally.

When to use MWR: Understanding your actual personal return, evaluating whether your contribution timing helped or hurt, and assessing the overall outcome including savings behavior.

Total Return vs. Price Return

Price return only considers asset price changes. Total return includes dividends, distributions, and other income. For dividend-paying stocks and funds, the gap can be 2-4% per year, compounding significantly over a decade. If your tracker only shows price return, it is systematically understating performance. Always use total return for portfolio evaluation.

Real vs. Nominal Returns

Nominal return is the raw percentage change. Real return adjusts for inflation. A 7% nominal return with 4% inflation leaves you with roughly 3% real growth. During high-inflation periods, this distinction is the difference between thinking you are building wealth and realizing you are losing purchasing power.

Benchmark Comparison

A return number in isolation is meaningless. Your portfolio returning 8% sounds good until you learn that a simple global index fund returned 15% over the same period. The right benchmark depends on your portfolio’s composition — a 60/40 portfolio should be compared to a 60/40 benchmark, not a 100% equity index. When selecting a tracker, check whether it supports benchmark comparison with customizable benchmarks.

Multi-Currency Portfolio Tracking

Multi-currency tracking is where the majority of portfolio tools fall apart. The challenges are specific and technical. For a deep dive, see the dedicated guide on multi-currency investing and the practical walkthrough on how to track investments across multiple currencies.

Which FX Rate to Use

There is no single “exchange rate” between two currencies. At any moment, you have the mid-market rate, the bid rate, the ask rate, and various retail rates with built-in spreads. The difference between mid-market and what your bank actually gives you can be 1-3%.

For portfolio tracking, the mid-market rate is the standard because it represents fair value without any markup. Be aware that the value your tracker shows may be slightly higher than what you would actually receive in a conversion.

When to Convert

For current positions, convert at today’s rate. For historical performance, you need the rates from each historical date. If you bought shares of a London-listed ETF on March 15th, the cost basis in your home currency should use the GBP exchange rate from March 15th, not today’s rate. Using today’s rate retroactively blends investment returns with FX movements that had not happened yet.

Reporting Currency Selection

Your reporting currency should typically be the currency you spend in day-to-day life or the one tied to your largest financial obligations. For guidance, see the multi-currency investing guide. Some investors maintain two views — one in their spending currency and one in USD or EUR for benchmark comparison. A good tracker supports switching reporting currencies without losing data.

FX Impact Attribution

The most valuable multi-currency feature is seeing how much of your return came from the underlying investments versus currency movements. A UK investor who bought a US stock that rose 10% in USD while GBP weakened 5% against USD saw roughly 15% in GBP terms. Without FX attribution, they might overestimate the quality of the stock pick itself.

Few trackers provide this breakdown. Most show a single return number in your home currency, leaving you to guess how much came from investments and how much from FX. If you hold assets in multiple currencies, this feature is worth seeking out. See How Currency Exchange Rates Affect Your Investment Returns for more.

Net Worth Tracking

Portfolio tracking focuses on investments. Net worth tracking encompasses everything — assets, cash, property, and debt. For a complete financial picture, you need both.

Going Beyond Investments

Your net worth includes everything you own minus everything you owe. For most people, this includes categories that portfolio trackers ignore:

Cash and bank accounts. Money in checking, savings, and money market accounts across however many banks and currencies you use. For advice on managing multi-currency income, see How to Track Freelance Income in Multiple Currencies.

Real estate. Often the largest single asset a person owns, yet it sits outside most portfolio trackers. Valuation is imprecise, but including an estimate is far better than excluding it. See How to Track Real Estate Across Countries.

Cryptocurrency. On-chain wallets, exchange balances, staking positions. Crypto is volatile enough that excluding it distorts your net worth number. See How to Track Crypto Across Countries.

Liabilities. Mortgages, student loans, car loans, credit card debt, margin loans. Ignoring liabilities makes you feel richer than you are.

Why Net Worth Gives a More Complete Picture

An investor who made 12% on their portfolio but took on $50,000 in new debt did not improve their financial position by as much as the portfolio number suggests. Conversely, an investor whose portfolio was flat but who paid down $30,000 in debt improved their net worth by $30,000 — a fact no portfolio tracker would show.

For international residents, net worth tracking is especially important because assets and liabilities span countries and currencies. A mortgage in British pounds, investments in US dollars, savings in Thai baht — the only way to see the full picture is to consolidate everything with proper currency conversion. See How to Calculate Your Net Worth Across Countries.

Tracking Net Worth Over Time

A single net worth number is useful. A time series is transformative. Plotting net worth over months and years reveals growth rate, volatility, milestone progress, and the impact of life events. Monthly snapshots are sufficient for most people — weekly adds noise, and daily is counterproductive.

Common Portfolio Tracking Mistakes

Even investors who track carefully make systematic errors that distort the picture.

Ignoring Fees

Fees are the most commonly overlooked drag. It is not just trading commissions — those have largely fallen to zero. The real costs are fund expense ratios (deducted from NAV, invisible on statements), platform fees, FX conversion spreads (0.5-1.5% over mid-market on many brokerages), and advisory fees. If your portfolio returned 8% but you paid 2% in total fees, your real return was 6%.

Wrong Cost Basis

Common errors include forgetting to include commissions in the purchase price, not adjusting for corporate actions like stock splits, ignoring the FX rate at the time of purchase (critical for international investors — see How to Track Investments Across Multiple Currencies), and using the wrong lot identification method (FIFO, LIFO, specific identification).

Not Accounting for Currency Impact

If you hold assets in currencies other than the one you spend in, your return in your home currency is not the same as the return in the asset’s currency. An investor who sees “S&P 500: +20%” might think they made 20%, but a European investor who held through an 8% dollar decline actually returned closer to 12% in EUR. That difference changes investment decisions. Always track in your home currency. See How Currency Exchange Rates Affect Your Investment Returns.

Survivorship Bias

If you sold a losing position and removed it from your tracker, your remaining portfolio looks better than your actual results. Your tracker should include the complete history of every position, including those sold at a loss. Overstating past performance leads to excessive risk-taking.

Checking Too Often

Daily checking feels productive but is usually counterproductive. Losses feel roughly twice as painful as equivalent gains feel pleasurable. If you check daily, you experience more losing days than if you check monthly — not because the portfolio is different, but because daily fluctuations include reversals that net out over longer periods. For most long-term investors, weekly or monthly reviews are sufficient.

Not Checking Enough

The opposite extreme is equally problematic. Investors who never review can miss asset allocation drift, fee increases, dividend changes, and currency exposure shifts. At minimum, review your complete portfolio quarterly and your net worth monthly. See How to Rebalance a Global Portfolio for a practical approach, and the expat investing guide for managing cross-border complexity.

Tracking Without Acting

The most subtle mistake is tracking meticulously but never acting on what the data tells you. If your tracker shows 15% allocation drift and you do not rebalance, the tracking is academic. Portfolio tracking is a means, not an end.

Building Your Tracking System

Here is a practical framework for building a tracking system that works.

Start with an inventory. List every account and asset you own — every brokerage, bank account, retirement fund, crypto wallet, property, and loan. Group by country and currency. This becomes the specification for what your tracker needs to support.

Choose your primary tool. Based on your inventory, select a tool that covers your needs: multi-currency support, asset class coverage, trusted performance methodology, and a price you will pay long-term. If you are an international investor or digital nomad, prioritize tools built for multi-currency tracking over those that treat it as an add-on. The digital nomad finance guide covers this decision in context.

Set up your accounts. Enter all holdings. This is the most time-consuming step, and also the most valuable — many investors discover forgotten accounts, unexpected concentrations, or fee structures they did not know about.

Establish a review cadence. Weekly glance at total values (5 minutes). Monthly review of net worth trend (30 minutes). Quarterly deep dive into allocation, performance, currency exposure, and rebalancing (1-2 hours). Annual comprehensive review including tax planning and fee audit (half day).

Make it sustainable. The best system is the one you actually use. Start with the minimum viable setup and add complexity only as needed.

Start Tracking Your Portfolio

Portfolio tracking is not optional — it is foundational to making informed investment decisions. The gap between investors who track properly and those who guess is not knowledge or intelligence. It is simply having accurate data.

The next step is straightforward: choose a tool, enter your accounts, and start measuring. The act of consolidating your full financial picture into one place will immediately reveal insights you did not have before.

If you are an international investor looking for a tracker built specifically for multi-currency portfolios and cross-border financial lives, FlashFi was built for exactly this problem. It handles multiple currencies natively, tracks investments and net worth across countries, and gives you the real numbers — not the fragmented, misleading ones you get from checking five different apps in three different currencies.

Start tracking your portfolio with FlashFi.

This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

By David Brougham