Thursday, July 7, 2011

Managing Your UITFs and Mutual Funds, Part 1: Bloomberg's Portfolio Tracker

Step 1: Create an account

Go to http://www.bloomberg.com/, and click the "portfolios" link under the "personal finance" menu. Set up an account, or use your Facebook or Twitter account. Sign in, and you'll be taken to the Portfolio Tracker page.


Step 2: Identify your funds

Look for the UITF or mutual fund that you own on Bloomberg's list of Philippine investment funds and take note of the Bloomberg symbols of the funds. For example, SNLFMNY:PM is for Sun Life's Prosperity Money Market Fund, BDOPBF:PM is for BDO's Peso Bond Fund, and BPIEQUI:PM is for BPI's Equity UITF (all throughout this post, we'll use the following funds to illustrate Bloomberg's features). Also, notice that clicking any fund link on the Bloomberg list will take you to the detailed information page of the fund; this can help you compare funds and decide which fund(s) to buy.

Step 3: Create your portfolio

Go back to the Portfolio Tracker page and click the "create portfolio" link. Enter the details (i.e., Bloomberg symbol, number of shares you own, purchase price per share, and purchase date) of each of your funds. You can also include individual Philippine stocks to your Bloomberg portfolio; note that the fourth entry, JFC:PM, is Jollibee Foods Corporation. Click "save changes" to finalize your portfolio.


Step 4: Keep track of your portfolio's performance

Successful creation of your portfolio will take you to the "performance" tab of Portfolio Tracker. Here you'll see how your investments, both individually and as a whole, are doing. The page presents information about daily gains and losses, and percentage and peso gains and losses since you purchased the funds; you'll also see the current value and weight of each investment in your portfolio, and the total value of your portfolio.


Step 5: Enter buy and sell transactions

To buy and sell fund units or stocks, click "edit" while on the "performance" tab. To add a new fund or stock to your portfolio, just enter the details on a new line, just like what you did in Step 3. To sell a fund or a stock (your entire holding or just a portion), select "sell" from the drop down box of the fund or stock, and enter the number of units or shares that you want to sell, the selling price per unit or share, and the transaction date. Click "save changes" to finalize.


Step 6: Keep track of realized gains and losses

Click the "realized gain-loss" tab to see realized gains and losses. In our example, selling 50 shares of JFC on the given date and at the specified price resulted in a gain of 29.23 pesos. Take note that Bloomberg does not allow for the entry of transaction fees, so you'll have to be careful in making buy or sell decisions for stocks based on data from Portfolio Tracker since an expected gain may actually be a loss if you consider fees (this does not apply to funds since quoted NAVPUs are already net of all fees).

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