Author Topic: Accuracy of Personal Capital, etc  (Read 4929 times)

El Gringo

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Accuracy of Personal Capital, etc
« on: December 17, 2013, 11:08:16 AM »
Does anybody know how websites like Personal Capital and SigFig track the performance of your investments? For one thing, in both SigFig and Personal Capital, their performance trackers never seem to factor the change in my 401k, which is entirely in an S&P500 mutual fund. It only seems to accurately capture the ETFs in my IRA. The account updates in terms of total amount, but the performance of my portfolio always seems to lag the market (when the market does well) and beat the market (when the market does poorly) and it appears to be directly related to my S&P500 mutual fund. I'm not sure if this has to do with the fact the fact that it's a mutual fund, or it's part of my 401k, or what.

Additionally, how do these performance trackers factor in the fact that I'm DSAing? They don't seem to be able to show how much my portfolio has grown due to the market, as opposed to the fact that I'm buying more shares.

Also, in Personal Capital, what's the difference between the "You Index" and the "Performance" tab? For example, in the past 6 months, my "You Index" is +6.74% whereas my holdings are +46.48%.

And on another note, why is Mint.com's investment tracker atrociously inaccurate? I can't make any sense of it.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2013, 11:15:23 AM by El Gringo »

thepokercab

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Re: Accuracy of Personal Capital, etc
« Reply #1 on: December 17, 2013, 01:16:38 PM »
I use Personal Capital as well, and I agree its hard to make sense of their "Your Index" and how they are actually tracking performance.  I've sort of given up trying to figure it out.  I mostly just use it as a convenient place to view all of my investments as well as track asset allocation, although I've plugged my accounts into Future Advisor as well and they both slightly disagree with my asset allocation.  For instance, Personal Capital says that 64% of my portfolio is in Domestic stock, and Future Advisor says its 69%.  Future Advisor seems to classify some of my REIT ETFs as stocks, where as Personal Capital labels them as "alternative",

Future Advisor and Personal Capital also seem to disagree in my small/mid/large cap proportions

Agree on Mint.. its not very good at all for looking at investments.. 



El Gringo

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Re: Accuracy of Personal Capital, etc
« Reply #2 on: December 17, 2013, 01:31:15 PM »
I agree - I mainly use Personal Capital to see my allocation.  I didn't give Future Adviser much time, because they are apparently unable to determine the asset allocation of my 401k. So 65% of my portfolio is "unknown". I emailed them about it, and they responded by saying they unfortunately "cannot support all custom 401(k) plan options due to limited support staff".

chicagomeg

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Re: Accuracy of Personal Capital, etc
« Reply #3 on: December 17, 2013, 01:34:04 PM »
For one of my accounts on Personal Capital I had to manually enter the ticker and it works now. I can't really remember how I did that though. I feel like it was associated with the fee tracker section of the website. The account is through Hartford/Mass Mutual, for whatever that's worth. As best as I can tell my Fidelity & Prudential 401k's work fine.

beltim

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Re: Accuracy of Personal Capital, etc
« Reply #4 on: December 18, 2013, 12:41:02 AM »
Mint's investment tracker is atrocious because Intuit (the makers of Mint) want you to buy Quicken, which has full-featured investment tracking.

The best way to calculate your investment returns, as opposed to additional investments you make, is to use an "internal rate of return," which gives you an annualized number that takes into account how long you've owned each investment (or each share of a mutual fund, for example).