Portfolio and watchlists

Portfolio is a Bonus feature: it appears under Bonus, the last group of the menu (and in your name menu), when TaDa Books offers it to you. From the menu it opens inside the company you are in, so the menu stays beside it; from the name menu it opens on its own page, and Back returns you to where you were. It shows your brokerage holdings one account at a time or all of them combined, priced live, with the columns investors expect: price, change, weight, shares, average cost, cost, today's gain, estimated annual income, total change, value, the day range and the 52-week range.

It is personal. It belongs to you, not to any company's books, and every one of your logins sees the same portfolio.

Holdings

Press Account to add a brokerage account. Give it your own name, the broker, and the last few digits the broker shows (never the full number). Cash the broker holds outside your positions goes in Cash.
Bring in its positions: - Import positions: download the positions file (a CSV) from your broker's website and pick it. TaDa Books shows what will change before anything is saved: New, Changed, Same, Removed (a position the file brought before and no longer lists, so it was sold) and Kept (yours). Press Apply the changes. - Link accounts: brings brokerage accounts in from your bank connection (today SimpleFIN). It lists the accounts that sent holdings, biggest first; cards, bank accounts and brokers that send none are under All accounts. Pick where each goes, press Preview, then Link. A linked account updates by itself when you open Portfolio, from the holdings your daily bank pull already brought in. The chip shows as of and the date your broker made those shares, costs and cash (amber once it is more than a day and a half old). Your bank connection asks each broker for a new file about once a day, so a trade you made today usually appears tomorrow; the prices themselves are live. - Quick add: type a ticker or a company name and pick it, or type it all at once. AAPL 10 @ 182.50 means 10 shares at $182.50 each; AAPL 10 1825 means a total cost of $1,825. Enter opens the position to check before saving.
Pick All to see everything combined: the same symbol held in several accounts becomes one row, marked with the number of accounts that hold it (hover it for their names, or open the row with its arrow). Your accounts sit side by side in one row; when there are more than fit, the row scrolls sideways. To keep an account's last digits off its pill, open the account with its pencil and click the eye in Last digits (hovering the pill still shows them).

Cost basis: pulled, typed or adjusted

A position from a file keeps the broker's share count, which updates with every import. Its cost is yours to correct: open the position, type the cost (as a total or per share), and it is kept through every future import. The cell shows adj. Use the broker's cost puts it back.
A position you typed yourself is marked Yours and is never removed by an import.
A holding with no cost at all shows No cost and stays out of the gain totals, instead of counting as all profit.
For a holding no price source knows (a private share, a fund without a ticker), type Price you set and it is valued at that price.

Combined holdings, your broker, and research

In All accounts, a symbol you hold in more than one account shows 2 accounts (or more) and a small arrow. Open it to see a row per account: its shares, cost, gains and value.
Pick one account and press Go to the broker to open the broker's website in a new tab, to sign in and trade. The address is the account's Broker website; it fills in by itself when the account is linked from SimpleFIN.
The Research column shows the icon of each research site. Click one to open the symbol there, with its chart and news, in a window beside the portfolio. Each click reuses the same window.

The range columns sort by where today's price sits in its range, from the bottom of the range to the top, not by the price itself.

Change, Today's gain and Total change each come three ways in the gear: dollars with the percent under it (on by default), dollars only, and percent only; show any of them. On a dollars-and-percent column the heading sorts by the dollars and the small % beside it by the percent; press either again to reverse it. A table wider than the screen has a scrollbar above it as well as below.

Saved views. Set the columns, their order, the sort and the display switches the way you like, open the gear and press Manage in its Saved views card, give it a name and press Save as a view. To switch, open the gear and click the view's name at the top: it puts that view back exactly. A view saved on Holdings works on Watchlists too: the columns both tables have follow the view, the rest stay hidden. Update saves the table as it is now into a view, and you can rename or delete it. To share one, press the share icon and type the person's sign-in email: it appears in their Views marked as from you. They need Portfolio themselves. A view holds only the layout, never your positions or amounts, and you can stop sharing at any time.

The amounts on the account chips can be switched off in the gear (Amounts on the account chips), and the eye blurs them like every other amount. Each account chip has its own pencil: it opens the account's window, to rename it (linking and the daily update never change the name you give it), set its broker and website, or remove it. A linked account's cash shows as it comes from the connection.

Everything you choose here - the tab, the account, the watchlist, the sort, the columns - is remembered for you and comes back the way you left it, on any computer.

Watchlists

The Watchlists tab holds named lists of symbols you follow, held or not. Add symbols with the box (several at once, separated by spaces or commas), or with the star on any holding. Each row shows today's move, the ranges, the price when you added it and the move Since added. Held means you also own it.

Hiding amounts, cards and names

The eye beside the gear blurs your own amounts at once: the totals, shares, cost, gains, value and account balances. Market prices stay readable. Press it again to show them.
In the gear, each totals card (Value, Today, Total change, Cost, Est annual income) has its own switch, and Totals hides the whole band. Names under symbols hides the company name under each ticker to save a line per row. Nothing changes until you press Apply.

Before the market opens

Under a price, Pre or After shows the latest pre-market or after-hours trade and its move from the regular close. The index strip shows the same for SPY, QQQ, DIA and IWM, the nearest free view of where the market is heading before the open. Futures prices are not available from the free price source.

Columns, totals and indexes

The gear on each table opens Columns and display: show or hide each column, move it up or down, and switch the Totals band and the Indexes cards on or off. On Holdings the index cards sit in the totals box, after a thin line; on Watchlists above the list. They follow the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Dow 30 and Russell 2000 through their ETFs (SPY, QQQ, DIA, IWM); type your own symbols there instead. Your choices follow you to any computer.

Your accounts in your order. Drag an account's chip onto another to put it there (a grip shows on the chip's top edge when you rest the mouse on it). The order is kept with your accounts, so it is the same on any computer.

The symbol and the headings stay put. Scroll the page down and, once the column headings reach the top of the screen, they stay there (with the sideways scroll bar under them) until the table ends; click one to sort, as usual. Scroll the table sideways and the Symbol column stays at the left, with a soft shadow at its edge.

Full screen. The Holdings and Watchlists tabs sit at the right of the title line, beside the full-screen button. Press it to give the whole window to Portfolio; press Exit full screen, or Esc, to come back. It is remembered for you, like the rest of your choices.

A symbol's full name. Rest the mouse on a symbol and a card shows the company or fund's full name, what kind of holding it is and, on Holdings, which accounts hold it, whether or not Names under symbols is on.

Live prices: your own free key

Prices come from your own free Alpaca account, so they are licensed to you. Press Connect live prices (or the Keys link on the line under the totals). The window walks you through it, with links that open Alpaca in a new tab: sign up with your email (a paper account; no Social Security number or money needed), and in the API Keys panel press Generate New Key. Paste the Key ID and the Secret Key and press Test and save: TaDa Books asks Alpaca for one price with them first, so a wrong key is caught there. The key is kept sealed, never shown again (only its last four characters), and works for every one of your logins. Remove it from the same window.

Official closing prices. While the market trades, the price is the latest trade on one exchange (IEX), so it can be a few cents off other sites. The day's change is always measured from the official closing price, and once the market closes the price is the official close too, so after the close your totals match your broker's to the cent. The official close shows about 16 minutes after the market closes; until then you see IEX's last trade.

Your prices are yours alone. Prices, P/E, dividend and earnings dates that your key fetched are kept for you only, and you never see figures another person's key fetched. So two people holding the same fund each ask for its price with their own key.

Seeing and changing your keys. Once a key is saved, the right end of the line under the totals lists every connected key with its last four characters, for example Keys: Alpaca ...RBJZ, Finnhub ...4F2A. Click it: each tab of the window (Live prices, P/E and earnings, Brokers) shows Connected, the key's last four characters and when it last worked. To change a key, paste the new one on its tab and press Test and save; it is checked first and then replaces the old one. Remove deletes it.

On Connections too. Connections in the menu lists the same three keys in a section of their own, Your own keys, for Portfolio, with where each stands (Connected, Not connected, Needs a look, Reconnect) and, for Plaid, how many of the free plan's 10 connections are used. Set up or Manage opens this same window. Only people allowed into Portfolio see that section.

Not every key for everyone. Live prices, P/E and earnings, and Brokers through Plaid are each offered on their own, person by person, by whoever runs your TaDa Books. A service you are not offered does not show: no tab in the keys window, no row on Connections, and a column that needs it says Not switched on for you in the column gear.

P/E, market cap and yield: a second free key (optional)

Three more columns, P/E (TTM), Market cap and Yield, come from your own free Finnhub key. Until it is added they show in the column gear with a lock and Needs a Finnhub key; press Add the key there, or open the price window and pick the P/E, market cap, yield tab. Sign up at finnhub.io/register (name, email and password), copy the API key from the top of your Finnhub dashboard, paste it and press Test and save. Then turn the columns on in the gear. Each holding is read about once a day, so a long list fills in over a few minutes. The yield also fills in Est annual income where the dividend itself is not known. Forward P/E (the next twelve months) is not offered: it needs analysts' estimates, which the free plan does not include.

Brokers through Plaid (optional)

Some brokers send no holdings through your bank connection (M1, for one). Plaid reads them straight from the broker, every day, with shares and cost. You use your own free Plaid account:

Open the price window (Live prices or Connect live prices) and pick the Brokers tab, or press Set up Plaid in Link accounts.
Sign up at dashboard.plaid.com/signup: it asks How will you use Plaid?; pick Personal use. On Create new team, pick the use case Personal finances and press Create team. On the dashboard's home page press Try for free in the Free trial banner. Your info asks where you live, your address, legal name, phone, date of birth and citizenship (Plaid verifies you as a person); Website can stay empty for your own use. Accept the Agreements: that turns on real data. (The keys shown before that are Sandbox keys, for Plaid's test banks only.) Then open Developers, then Keys and copy the client_id and the Production secret.
Paste both, keep Production picked, and press Test and save.
In Link accounts, press Connect with Plaid, find your broker in Plaid's window and sign in there. Its accounts then appear in the list, marked Plaid; link each one like any other. Positions you typed by hand are never replaced: if that account had some, the preview lists them as Kept, so delete them after linking or they count twice.

TaDa Books reads Plaid again when you open Portfolio and its last read is more than two hours old (Plaid itself checks each broker one to four times a market day), so a trade usually shows the same day.

Plaid's free trial allows a set number of connections in the life of your Plaid account (its dashboard shows how many are used), and removing one does not give it back. One sign-in at a broker brings all of that broker's accounts. When a broker asks you to sign in again, press Reconnect on it: the same connection is repaired, no new one is used. Sandbox is for trying it with Plaid's test sign-in (user_good and pass_good) and never touches a real account.

Pre-market and after hours

Under each price, a small line shows the last pre-market or after-hours trade and its move from the regular close. For a column you can sort, turn on Pre / after (price and percent) or Pre / after % in the gear. They follow the market's clock: titled Pre-market before the open and After hours after the close, and hidden while the market is open. The free price feed sees one exchange, so a stock that has not traded there since the close shows a dash.

Dividend and earnings dates

Three more columns in the gear, on Holdings and on Watchlists:

Ex-dividend: the next ex-dividend day with its amount per share and how many days away it is (own the shares before that day to be paid), or the last one when the next is not announced yet. From your Alpaca key.
Next earnings: the next quarterly report, with whether it comes before the open or after the close; amber when it is a week away or less.
Last earnings: the last report and whether earnings per share beat or missed what analysts expected.

The earnings columns need the Finnhub key. Yield now works with the Alpaca key alone: it is the year's dividends over today's price, and it also fills in Est annual income. A column whose key is missing shows a lock in the gear with the button that adds it. Short interest and the PEG ratio are not offered yet.

How fresh the prices are

The line under the totals says whether the market is in pre-market, open, after hours or closed, the time of the latest price, and where prices come from. While the market trades, prices refresh about once a minute (a little less often when you follow a very long list). Mutual funds and money markets price once a day, so they show the value your broker reported.

Staying inside each service's limit. Your price and figures services allow a set number of calls a minute per key (Alpaca 200, Finnhub 60 today). Every refresh first takes its share of that minute, oldest prices first, and leaves the rest for the next minute, so a long list fills in over a minute or two instead of being refused. P/E, market cap and yield are asked again every 15 minutes, dividend and earnings dates once a day; until then the latest ones show. Refresh keeps any price fetched in the last 15 seconds, so a second press costs nothing. When a minute's calls are used up, or a service says it had too many, the button rests and counts down the seconds until it can ask again.