How do you use the Custom Groups feature in your Sharesight portfolio? Aside from using it to divide investments into their risk profiles, are there any other interesting ways you use it?
I use the groups to analyse performance of various themes that I may wish to follow in live and watchlist portfolios.
I use them to allocate according to different asset classes. ShareSight does do this natively, but I find that it is often not ideal (lots of items are classified as “unknown”, especially since I use a lot of custom investments), hence why I created my own group.
I create them based on my own asset allocation framework, which adheres more to risk, style, and longevity as opposed to a classic AA breakdown:
- Core ETFs (bedrock of global equity exposure)
- Bluechip Tech (aka “new industrials”)
- China Tech (speculative & risky)
- Emerging Tech (small caps, mostly Aussie)
- Macro Themes (e.g. healthcare for an ageing world)
- Other (misc and includes property and cash via custom investment feature)
Since I have a few managed funds and ETFs I have one group setup to align each investment with it’s true asset type eg IOO is part of the “Overseas share” group
The other group I have is a “goals” one, where I assign each asset to a label such as growth, dividend stock, alternatives.
I love using the diversity report to then see the proportion of each allocation as a whole in my portfolio. Helps keep me aware of allocations in case I need to rebalance.
This is a great tool and one of the best uses for me is to more accurately understand the diversity of my assets across country/region. I have reallocated each asset to its true country or region as best as possible.
The default country report doesn’t always pick up where the equity is actually based e.g. if you have Alibaba purchased on the NYSE exchange it is treated as a US stock in the default report, thereby under reporting your China asset allocation and over reporting your US asset allocation.
This is the breakdown of country/region I use, but really it comes down to what strategy you have set yourself for diversifying your own assets.
- USA
- Australasia
- UK
- Western Europe
- Japan
- China
- Emerging Markets
Similar to some others, I use Custom Groups to allocate to investment types:
Australian LICs
International LICs
International ETFs
Australian Managed Funds
International Managed Funds
then some broad themes such as:
Banks, Resources, Retail, Financial Services and another for
Hot stocks / Speculative.
Allows me to compare the performance of large themes and categories, instantly see the proportions allocated internationally and domestically and compare performance within the themes e.g. which LICs doing the best.
Can also cross categorize with Filters such as Active or Passive Management, Dodgy stocks (ones I need to sell), Stocks to top up in a dip, or whatever you like - to get more highlights in monitoring performance.
Just waiting to have different time period reporting available in Sharesight which will be the icing on the cake.