We just released the 2015 8949 IRS tax forms. If you have sold any stocks or mutual funds in 2015, then you can generate IRS Form 8949 to calculate your gain or loss on a stock sale. EquityStat will automatically calculate your short-term gains and losses and long-term gains and losses and generate a PDF 8949 form. You can then save or print out this form and give it to your accountant or tax preparer. To generate Form 8949 click the Tools menu and then select the Generate Form 8949 menuitem.
Investor, Stock & Personal Finance Conferences 2016
Here is a schedule of investor, stock, money and personal finance conferences for 2016.
January 18-20, 2016
Advanced Personal Financial Planning Conference – Las Vegas
http://www.cpa2biz.com/AST/Main/CPA2BIZ_Primary/PersonalFinancialPlanning/PRDOVR~PC-PFP/PC-PFP.jsp
February 9 – 10, 2016
Finovate Europe – London
http://europe2016.finovate.com/
February 10-12, 2016
Technology Tools For Today (T3) – Ft. Lauderdale
http://www.technologytoolsfortoday.com/conferences
February 21-23, 2016
The Traders Expo New York
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
February 26, 2016
MIT Sloan Investment Conference
http://www.sloaninvestmentconference.com/
March 2-5, 2016
The MoneyShow Orlando
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
March 13-16, 2016
Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference – Orlando
https://www.ici.org/events/upcoming/conf_16_mfimc
March 16-17, 2016
CFA Institute Conference: Wealth Management
https://www.cfainstitute.org/learning/events/Pages/03162016_118419.aspx
March 29-30, 2016
FinDevR New York
http://newyork2016.findevr.com/
April 28-29, 2016
Value Investor Conference – Omaha
http://www.valueinvestorconference.com/
April 25-28, 2016
FPA Retreat – Phoenix
http://fparetreat.org/
May 9-11, 2016
The MoneyShow Las Vegas
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
May 10-11, 2016
Finovate Spring – San Jose
http://spring2016.finovate.com/
May 19-22, 2016
Better Investing National Convention – Washington DC
http://www.betterinvesting.org/public/singletabs/event+listings/nonmembereventdetail.htm?eventurl=%2fmembers%2ftools%2fevents%2fnational%2f2016binc.htm
May 24-27, 2016
Strategic Investor Conference – Dallas
http://www.mauldineconomics.com/sic-2016/
June 13-15, 2016
MorningStar Investment Conference – Chicago
http://corporate1.morningstar.com/Morningstar-Investment-Conference/
August 25-27, 2016
The MoneyShow San Francisco
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
September 8-9, 2016
Finovate Fall – New York
http://fall2016.finovate.com/
September 13, 2016
Delivering Alpha – New York
http://www.deliveringalpha.com/delivering-alpha-ii/
September 16-17, 2016
The MoneyShow Toronto
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
September 21-24, 2016
FinCon – San Diego
http://finconexpo.com/
September 22-23, 2016
The All-Stars of Options Trading
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
October 20-21, 2016
The MoneyShow Dallas
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
November 17-19, 2016
The Traders Expo Las Vegas
http://www.moneyshow.com/conferences.asp
Best and Worst Stocks of 2015
According to the Wall Street Journal the best stock of 2015 was Netflix. It was up 134%. The worst stock of 2015 was Chesapeake Energy. It was down 77%.
You can see the list of best stocks here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/briefly/2015/12/31/5-best-performers-in-the-sp-500-in-2015/
You can see the list of worst stocks here:
How did your investments do in 2015? What was your best stock? What was your worst? If you are not tracking your investment’s performance, consider using EquityStat. With EquityStat you can track the overall performance of your portfolio as well as the performance of each individual investment. EquityStat tracks the annualized return, year to date return, daily gain, overall gain and many other metrics of your investments. With these metrics you can easily determine what are your best investments and what are your worst investments.
New Features in the Portfolio Manager
We have added a few new features to the portfolio manager.
Portfolios
You can now create multiple portfolios to group your investments from multiple accounts. For example, you can have a portfolio for your stocks, mutual funds and 401k. To create a new portfolio click the New menu and then choose the New Portfolio menuitem. Click here to learn more about portfolios.
New Performance Metrics/Columns
We have added a few new performance metrics – Quarter Return, P/E ratio and Dividend Yield. To see these columns in your portfolio click the Options menu and then choose the Change Columns menuitem.
Maximize Portfolio
There are times when all the investments in the top portion of your portfolio don’t display. To see all of your investments you have to scroll around. We have added the ability to maximize the portfolio so that we display as many investments as we can. To maximize your portfolio click the three line graphic in the upper left hand corner of your portfolio and choose Maximize from the drop down menu. The top portion of your portfolio will be expanded and the transaction section will be moved down to accommodate the investments section. This just gives you a way to make the most of your screen space and display more of your investment data. To restore your portfolio in panes (the default setting) click the Restore menuitem from the drop down menu.
Do you have any ideas for a new feature? Contact us and let us know.
Creating multiple portfolios – New Feature
We recently added a new feature to your EquityStat portfolio manager. You can now create multiple portfolios for your account. Having multiple portfolios gives you the ability to group and separate your investments. For example, you can have a portfolio for your individual stocks, a portfolio for your mutual funds and a portfolio for your 401K.
To add a new portfolio click the New menu and then chose the New Portfolio menuitem from the dropdown menu.
You will then see two new tabs. A tab for your current portfolio and a tab for your new portfolio.
To edit the name of your portfolio click the pencil icon, which will display an edit box.
Next type over the current portfolio name with the new portfolio name and click the Save button.
To view the investments of each portfolio click on the portfolio’s tab. From here you can also add new investments to the portfolio as well as edit investments.
To view the view the performance all your entire account (all portfolios) click the Account Value box at the top.
To delete a portfolio first delete all the investments in the portfolio. Once the portfolio is empty, click the ‘X’ icon in the portfolio tab.
Behind the Design
Behind the Design of EquityStat’s Portfolio Manager
EquityStat’s portfolio manager was built for investors by investors. As investors we found many portfolio managers just didn’t work how we wanted them to. Whether the portfolio manager was from a brokerage account, mutual fund or from a software company, many just didn’t work well. This was a driving force for us building EquityStat’s portfolio manager.
One major problem of other portfolio managers is they don’t refresh your investment prices and portfolio value automatically. To see your latest values, you have to manually refresh the page.
We didn’t want our portfolio manager to behave this way. With our portfolio manager your prices and portfolio values are updated automatically without you having to refresh the page. Every 15 minutes we query the latest prices of your investments and update your portfolio. In the upper right hand corner, we even display the last time the quotes were updated. All of this happens automatically without you having to constantly refresh the page to see how your investments are performing.
Another problem of other portfolio managers is entering transactions. When entering transactions the portfolio manager will post back the transaction to the webserver and then do a page refresh with the new data. This is very cumbersome.
EquityStat’s portfolio manager does all of the saving in the background. When you add or edit a transaction, the transaction is saved and updated behind the scene. The only thing you see is notification at the top of the portfolio that the transaction has been saved. The benefit of this is less page refreshing and a more natural, less cumbersome way of entering transactions.
In the coming weeks, we will highlight more design features or our portfolio manager and how it benefits our users.
If you bought Berkshire stock how rich would you be?
If you bought Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) stock instead of paying for college, how rich would you be? Instead of having that fabulous wedding, what if you bought Berkshire? How about if you owned a couple of shares of Berkshire instead of your dream home, how rich would you be?
Use our Berkshire Calculator to find out. Just click this link
http://www.equitystat.com/pages/howrich.aspx
and then enter the year you went to college, had that fabulous wedding or bought your dream home. Next, enter the amount you paid. Click Go and you will see how rich you could be.
Warning: For those over 40 this calculator could make you sick to your stomach.
Changing Columns in Your Portfolio
By default we display a pre-configured set of columns for your portfolio. If you desire you can easily change the columns that are displayed in your portfolio. To do this click the Options link at the top of your portfolio and choose the Change Columns menuitem.
Clicking the Change Columns menuitem will display a list of columns that are available and a list of columns your are currently using. You can add and remove columns as well as change the order of your columns. If you want a description of a column, just click on the column in either of the lists.
When you are finished change your columns, click the Change button to save your changes and get back to your portfolio.
Importing your transactions into EquityStat
Do you have a lot of transactions that you need to import into EquityStat that you don’t want to manually enter? If so then you can use EquityStat’s import feature to import these transactions.
To import your transactions first get these transactions into a CSV (comma separated variable) file. The easiest way to generate a CSV file is to use Excel or any other spreadsheet application. With Excel you can enter your data into a spreadsheet and then save the file as a CSV file.
The CSV file must be in a certain format for you to import your transactions into your portfolio. The first line in the file must identify what each column is. The following column indentifiers are valid – Symbol, Date, TranType, Quantity, Price, Amount, Commission.
The valid values for the TranType column are Buy, Sell, Div, Rediv (Re-invested Dividend), Longcg (Long-Term Capital Gain), Shortcg (Short-Term Capital Gain), Relongcg (Re-Invest Long Term Capital Gain), Reshortcg (Re-Invest Short Term Capital Gain).
If you have a TranType value of Div then you will need an Amount column and you will not need the Quantity and Price column. If you have a TranType value of something other than a non re-invested dividend or non re-invested capital gain, you will need a Quantity and Price column. All rows must have a Symbol and Date column.
Here is a screen shot of a sample Excel file in the proper format.
Once you have your data entered in your spreadsheet, save it as a CSV file.
Next, login to your portfolio and click the New menu and choose Import Transactions. Then from the Import page, upload your CSV file from your computer. The transactions that will be imported will then be displayed. If everything is correct, continue the import process.
If you have any questions with how to do an import, feel free to contact our support desk by clicking the Help link from our home page.
Does Buffett think Berkshire stock is underpriced?
If you read Berkshire’s annual letter, you can gain a lot of insight as to what Buffett thinks of Berkshire. So based on the 2014 annual letter, does Buffett think Berkshire’s stock is undervalued, overvalued or just right?
First, Buffett has always said, over time Berkshire’s stock price will reflect the intrinsic value of the business. Calculating Berkshire’s intrinsic value is not a precise exercise but a lot of analysts do it, including Buffett and Munger.
In his 2014 annual letter, Buffett points out several times that the value of an asset on the books is a lot less than the true or intrinsic value of the asset. For example, when discussing Berkshire’s insurance float he says
Charlie and I believe the true economic value of our insurance goodwill – what we would happily pay for float of similar quality were we to purchase an insurance operation possessing it – to be far in excess of its historic carrying value. Under present accounting rules (with which we agree) this excess value will never be entered on our books. But I can assure you that it’s real. That’s one reason – a huge reason – why we believe Berkshire’s intrinsic business value substantially exceeds its book value.
When discussing the businesses that make up Berkshire, Buffett says
Furthermore, the intrinsic value of these businesses, in aggregate, exceeds their carrying value by a good margin, and that premium is likely to widen. Even so, the difference between intrinsic value and carrying value in both the insurance and regulated-industry segments is far greater. It is there that the truly big winners reside.
And finally, Buffett points out that the peculiarities of Marmon’s rail car business which causes Marmon’s book value to be undervalued.
One further fact about our rail operation is important for you to know: Unlike many other lessors, we manufacture our own tank cars, about 6,000 of them in a good year. We do not book any profit when we transfer cars from our manufacturing division to our leasing division. Our fleet is consequently placed on our books at a “bargain” price. The difference between that figure and a “retail” price is only slowly reflected in our earnings
through smaller annual depreciation charges that we enjoy over the 30-year life of the car. Because of that fact as well as others, Marmon’s rail fleet is worth considerably more than the $5 billion figure at which it is carried on our books.
Based on these quotes is Buffett hinting that book value is substantially under intrinsic value? And since Buffett believes stock price will eventually be the same as intrinsic value, does Buffett believe Berkshire’s stock price is undervalued?
I think the answer is a yes!