We’re putting you folks in the director’s chair on this one: I’m excited to announce our ramped-up new portfolio management capabilities for TK clients, courtesy of Portfolio Director. Check it out today under Accounts > Download Data.

Get your equities and options trade data into Portfolio Director’s software, and suddenly you can slice-and-dice it in all kinds of illuminating new ways. First off, Portfolio Director makes it a snap to get a handle on your taxable gain/loss situation for the year, comparing original price of the stock to the sell price with dates for each transaction. Especially if you’re an active trader, speeding up this calculation can be a real godsend.

Once your tax homework is squared away, you can move on to the really fun stuff. Portfolio Director lets you see your time-weighted returns, for example, or compare your performance to a specific benchmark that you define. You can also check out your asset allocation by several filters: by symbol, investment type, Morningstar category, and other criteria.

Another handy feature, especially at year’s end: you can set up a model portfolio and then compare your portfolio over time to that model; when your holdings diverge from the model too much, Portfolio Director tells you exactly how many shares to buy or sell in each asset group to get back into balance, super-quick and with the greatest of ease.

If you’re a real quant-nut, then Portfolio Director’s flexible reporting capabilities is really up your alley. Make your own reports based on up to 100 different criteria, so you can really fine-tune your performance analysis. For example, if you’re trading strategies with a stock and an option component – say, covered calls or bull put spreads – you can use Portfolio Director to calculate your true cost basis for the entire position, then calculate performance of those trades based on that. And really that’s just for starters.

Let us know what you think, will you? I’m especially curious what you creative types can do with this flexible reporting feature. I’d love to share some of the more popular report types with this group and get everyone jump-started on a fresh way to see their own performance. Bring ‘em on, please!

[image: The director's chair by .damien on flickr]

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Follow the markets at the TradeKing Blog, or learn more about options strategies from the Options Guy.