Help Topic - Cash


Why do I have two sets of performance metrics. One for ‘Equities only’ and one for ‘Equities and Cash’?

The ‘Equities Only’ chart and performance calculations are, as has been previously published on Covestor, the time weighted return of your portfolio. This is an institutional calculation, used by Mutual Funds that gives your followers a view of your portfolio as if you were fully invested at any time. In other words the ‘Equities Only’ view shows anyone following you with a fixed amount of money the performance they would achieve.

A number of members have requested a view of their own returns, which is the performance of their portfolio including cash. For many investors cash is an active allocation decision and your followers may choose to follow you as you add to and reduce the amount of cash in your account. The ‘Equities and Cash’ view is still a time-weighted calculation, showing the cumulative daily returns and not the ‘simple return’ that you may see in your brokerage account.



Why does my performance history for ‘Equities and Cash’ not go back as far as my performance for ‘Equities only’?

Covestor is able to access a maximum of 15 months of cash history from members’ brokerage accounts in order to generate the ‘Equities and Cash’ calculations.

We are not able to capture historic cash data from all brokers and so members who use Fidelity Investments, Vanguard, Firsttrade, Banc of America and Merrill Lynch may find that their view including cash only starts on or around the inception of the ‘Equities and Cash’ view on the Covestor website.

Some members using margin accounts with Scottrade, E*Trade, TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab may also find their cash chart does not go back to their inception on the site. The use of cash vs. margin is not always clearly distinguished by these brokers.



I have just added new funds to my brokerage account and my performance including cash for that day doesn’t look correct?

Since we cannot determine the exact time of day that new funds are available in your account, we treat all funds as being available for the trading day that they are credited to your account. In some cases the funds may have been cleared outside of trading hours and in those cases we may overestimate your exposure to cash for that day.



I am automatically importing my trades, why do I not have a view of my performance including cash?

Where there are significant gaps in the daily record of a members cash position we can not accurately generate a view of your history including cash. As such the chart and performance calculations start from the date at which there is robust consistent cash data. Only members with an ‘Equities and Cash’ view in their account will appear in the Equities and Cash performance rankings

We are unable to import cash figures for members using Fidelity Netbenefits.



I enter my trades manually. Why can’t I track my performance including cash?

Only members automatically importing their trades have a view of their performance calculations including cash. This is because it requires a daily view of the cash position to calculate these returns.



What interest is applied to my cash balance?

Although different brokers apply different interest rates to cash we apply a single rate to all accounts. This is because we don’t know where other members following your trades will be investing, so are trying to give them as accurate as possible view of the performance returns they can achieve if they replicate your portfolio.

We apply the US 13 week Treasury bill (^IRX) rate to all performance calculations.



What does the asset allocation chart mean?

The asset allocation chart provides a view of allocation to assets beyond equities in the members brokerage account. This chart is updated daily, before the market opens.

‘Equities’ includes all equity instruments including stocks, mutual funds and ETFs. The ‘cash’ position includes cash held on deposit or in money market funds/accounts. Margin represents the value of equities purchased with funds borrowed from the broker, and ‘Other’ represents all other asset classes traded with the broker that may include bonds, futures and options.


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