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How to use your Portfolio in Online Share Trading
When you log in to Online Share Trading, you’ll find a wide range of tools, reports and other resources available to help you make informed investment decisions. This guide will help you get to know how our Portfolio tool works and how it can make tracking your investments easier and more convenient.
How does the Portfolio tool work?
If you haven’t yet created your own portfolios, you’ll see an automated one when you first open the Portfolio section in Online Share Trading. This list automatically shows all the New Zealand and Australian shares that you have bought or sold through your ASB Securities Online Share Trading account. From it you can gain some key insights:
- Recommendations and Announcements for each stock listed in your portfolio
- Cost for each stock listed in your portfolio and for your total portfolio (including or excluding brokerage fees)
- Market price for each stock listed in your portfolio
- Market value of each stock listed in your portfolio and for your total portfolio
- Percentage gain or loss for each stock listed in your portfolio and for your total portfolio
- Individual transactions for each stock
- Other Portfolios you’ve set up
The Portfolio tool is designed to make book-keeping easier for your Online Share Trading account and it can be a great help, but you should also be aware of what your Portfolio tool does not do or show:
- It’s not reconciled against the share registry
- It doesn’t automatically record purchases made through other brokers
- It doesn’t automatically record 'off-market transactions' like corporate actions, share consolidations, share splits or dividend reinvestment plans
- It's designed to track the performance of shares, not fixed interest investments - which is why yield traded bonds will not be displayed correctly
While stocks purchased through other brokers and off-market transactions are not automatically added, you can manually add other transactions like these in just a few clicks.
Understanding your different Portfolio views
Inside the Portfolio section you have three views to choose from, starting with the consolidated view.
1. Your consolidated view
This view will show you how your overall ASB Securities portfolio is performing. It calculates the total profit or loss for all transactions of each stock listed in your portfolio and provides the weighted average of the stock entries.
New Zealand and Australian Securities
Above the Portfolio total are the individual New Zealand and Australian Securities that make up your portfolio. This section provides a snapshot of your current position. During market hours this pricing information has a 20 minute delay, and after hours it will reflect the market close figures. It includes:
Stock
Every stock has a unique code. If you click on this code, you'll go to the stock detail page where you can find stock pricing and more details about this stock's performance.
Quantity
How much of this stock is recorded in your ASB Securities portfolio.
Total Cost
The total number of shares recorded in your ASB Securities portfolio, multiplied by the cost price of all transactions. If you’ve selected the ‘include broker fees’ checkbox, then the “Total cost” will reflect this.
Market Price
The current market price for these shares (as at the time stamp).
Market Value
The current market value of the shares recorded in your ASB Securities portfolio.
Change
The current amount in dollars that the shares recorded in your ASB Securities portfolio have gone up or down since you bought them.
Percent
The percentage the shares recorded in your ASB Securities portfolio are up or down since you bought them. For each stock entry the percentage change is the difference between the total cost and the market value.
Portfolio total
The summary section at the bottom tells you how much it has cost you to invest, what your investment is now worth (as at the time stamp), and how much you’ve gained or lost both in dollar terms and by percentage.
If you have Australian Securities, we will work out your Portfolio totals by giving those stock a value in New Zealand dollars at an indicative exchange rate.
Recommendations and Announcements
From time to time, you’ll notice a speech bubble or a newspaper icon appear beside the stock code. This means there’s new information available about this stock that may help you investment decisions. To see what’s new, just click on the icon.
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What it means
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A speech bubble shows that analysts have released a new recommendation for this stock.
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A newspaper icon means that there is a new announcement about this company.
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A red exclamation will show you your recent trades.
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A blue tack shows this stock was entered manually.
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2. Your transactional view
Much like an internet banking page, the transactional view page will let you see the transactions you have made for each stock.
To see this view, select the stock in the consolidated view and click “view”. This will display all the details for each transaction you’ve made, including whether you bought or sold, or if the entry was made automatic or manually added.
You can also filter your transactions to make it easier to zero in on what you’re most interested in. You can sort by date, stock codes, buys or sells and market.
3. Your portfolio summary view
You'll find this view under the drop menu. It's useful for seeing how the performance of each of your portfolios is impacting your share trading overall. It's also where you can choose which portfolio will be your default and if you want a portfolio to update automatically or include brokerage fees in the costs.
How to add or remove stocks from your portfolio
The on-market transactions (such as trades) you complete through ASB Securities will automatically be added to your portfolio.
What won’t automatically be added are any off-market transactions, like a share split or corporate action; nor any transaction you’ve done through another broker. These can be added manually and it’s very easy.
1. Select "Add"
In the consolidated view, click on the blue ‘+ Add’ button.
2. Complete the transaction form
Fill in the details of your trade. The only fields you must fill in are:
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What it means
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Type
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Choose ‘Buy’ to add stock or ‘Sell’ to remove. You can also use this feature to record events like a share consolidation.
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Quantity
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Number of shares you’re adding or removing.
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Stock code
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The stock you are adding or removing.
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Price
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The total price you paid or accepted for this trade.
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You can add more details if you want like the brokerage fee.
3. Save your transaction
Check your entry is correct and click ‘Save’. Your transaction will now show in your portfolio.
Create your own tailored portfolio
While your automated portfolio is a powerful tracking tool, creating a personalised portfolio can also be useful. These are great because they allow you to group stocks in different ways. For instance, you might want to track trades you’ve made in a type of industry or if you’ve bought stocks for your children you can make a portfolio under their name.
A personalised portfolio lets you track the performance of these trades as a whole. To create a new portfolio, simply follow these steps:
1. Select 'Create new portfolio'
From the main dropdown menu, choose ‘Create new portfolio.’
2. Name your portfolio
The portfolio summary page will appear with a name field. Fill this in so you can identify your different portfolios.
3. Choose your settings
Select the check boxes which allow you to choose portfolio you want as your default, whether you want it to automatically update with trades you do through your ASB Securities Share Trading account and whether you want the calculation to include or exclude brokerage and fees.
4. Click ‘Done’
That’s it. Your new portfolio will now appear in the main dropdown menu.
Practice trading with a shadow portfolio
You can use the portfolio option to create a ‘shadow’ or test portfolio. These are practice portfolios that you can use to fine-tune or test your trading strategy.
You choose an imaginary amount to invest and manually add your buy and sell transactions to reflect buying and selling shares. The portfolio will track what your performance would have been.
Shadow portfolios are a great way to get real-world trading experience and gain confidence without spending any money.
Get the most out of Online Share Trading
Portfolios are just one of the powerful tools you’ll find inside Online Share trading that can help you make investment decisions. If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea now to read our guides on watchlists, researching companies and charts.
Next steps
Enquire now
Email us if you'd like help to get started.
Call us
Contact the ASB Securities team from 7am to 6pm NZT, Monday to Friday.
Other helpful guides
ASB Securities Limited is an NZX firm. When you trade on the NZX markets through ASB Securities you must comply with NZX rules as outlined in the ASB Securities Trading Conduct for Online Share trading. ASB Securities terms and conditions apply. Pricing data supplied by ASX and/or NZX. ASB Cash Management Account, ASB Foreign Currency Account, ASB Margin Lending and ASB Term Deposits are provided by ASB Bank Limited. ASB term's apply. Rates and fees may change. Refer to asb.co.nz for other fees and charges. This page does not have regard to the financial situation or needs of any reader. As individual circumstances differ, you should seek appropriate professional advice. See the ASB Securities glossary for share trading and investment terms or Morningstar for research terms.
