What Should Individual Investors Actually Track?

What you must track (non-negotiable)

Every acquisition with full details

For each asset you buy: date, number of units, price per unit in the transaction currency, exchange rate at transaction date (if foreign currency), total cost in your home currency, and transaction costs. Transaction costs are part of your cost basis and reduce your taxable gain — miss them consistently and you'll overpay CGT.

Every disposal with the matched cost basis

When you sell, record not just the sale details but the matched cost basis — which lots are being disposed of, under which method. This is what drives the gain or loss calculation.

All income events

Dividends, interest, rental income, PE distributions — each needs to be recorded with date, amount, and currency. For PE distributions, you need the split between return of capital and gain.

Corporate actions that affect cost basis

Stock splits, bonus shares, rights issues, spin-offs — each requires an adjustment to cost basis records. These are easy to forget because they don't involve moving money, but ignoring them means subsequent gain calculations will be wrong.

What you should track (strongly recommended)

Periodic valuations for illiquid assets

Update when something meaningful changes: a new funding round, a nearby comparable sale for property, a quarterly fund NAV statement. Between updates, the last known value is your best estimate.

Cash flow history for the whole portfolio

Record every significant contribution and withdrawal. This is what enables a meaningful IRR calculation — the only way to know your actual investment returns after accounting for the timing of your capital.

Unfunded commitments for PE

If you've committed to a PE fund or angel syndicate, track the total commitment, called amount, and remaining unfunded commitment. This is a real claim on your future cash flow.

Debt positions for leveraged assets

Track the outstanding balance, interest rate, and repayment schedule for mortgages and any margin borrowing. Net equity positions are what matter, not gross asset values.

What you don't need to track

The value of your main home (usually)

Your primary residence is typically exempt from capital gains (PPR relief in the UK, §121 exclusion in the US). Unless you've rented it out, it doesn't belong in your investment ledger.

Daily valuations of private assets

Private companies don't have daily prices. Trying to mark your startup investment to a daily value is false precision. Update when you have new information.

Performance vs arbitrary benchmarks

Benchmarking is useful for evaluating fund managers. For personal portfolio management, your IRR vs your own goals is more relevant than your return vs a market index.

A practical priority order

1. Get your current holdings into a system — what you own, how much, when you bought it, what you paid.
2. Ensure all past disposals are recorded correctly so your realised gain history is accurate.
3. Add income events for the current and prior tax years.
4. Add periodic valuations for illiquid assets — even rough estimates.
5. Add contribution and withdrawal history to enable IRR calculation.
6. Add debt positions for accurate net equity on leveraged assets.

Once the foundation is in place, ongoing maintenance is the easy part. Most of the work is in the initial setup.

The goal: decisions and compliance, not comprehensiveness

Every piece of tracking should answer one of two questions: will I need this for my tax return? Will this change a decision I make about my portfolio? If the answer to both is no, you don't need to track it.

Track less, but track it right.