Changing the Primary Currency
How to change the primary currency of the Portfolio Tracker.
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How to change the primary currency of the Portfolio Tracker.
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The Portfolio Tracker's default primary currency is set to USD, and it also lets you select an optional secondary currency to track important metrics like realized P&L. This allows you, for example, to trade crypto pairs denominated in USD as well as US stocks denominated in USD, while also monitoring your performance in your local currency.
However, you can also change the primary currency if you plan on not using USD as your primary currency. For example, say I am located in Canada and will be doing all my trading in Canadian dollars, I can change the primary currency to CAD. Here's how to do it:
Open a new instance of the Tracker, go to any of the Account tabs and click in cell C2 in the Top Line Stats.
In the menu, go to View > Inspector > Format to reveal the Sidebar.
At the top of the sidebar, click on the Cell tab. The Data Format, should be set to "Smol Currency". Click on "Edit Custom Format"
In the modal that opens up, you'll see a number of rules, each starting with a $ sign. Click on that sign and select the currency you want to use instead.
Do this for each rule, then click OK.
You'll notice that the currency of the Tracker has now been changed to display CA$ everywhere.
If you find that this takes up too much space in your cells, you can go back and edit the format custom format "Smol Currency". You can get rid of the currency symbol altogether.
if you change the primary currency you'll want to enter trades for assets denominated in your newly chosen primary currency.
We recommend making special assignations for each non-usd-denominated asset you trade.
For example, if I want to enter trades for Bitcoin denominated in CAD, I'll specify in the Special Assignations table that the ticker "BTC" refers to the asset code "BTC-CAD". Doing so will ensure that the current price of Bitcoin is quoted in CAD. If I don't do this, the current value of my holdings will be denominated in USD, while your cost basis will be in CAD, which will produce an erroneous P&L.
Similarly, if you are trading stocks of the Onex Corporation listed on a Canadian stock market, you'll want to enter its asset code next to the ticker you wish to use for it (in this case, ONEX). The Tracker will then remember that the ticker ONEX refers to stocks of the Onex Corporation denominated in Canadian dollars.
Special Assignations are optional. I could simply enter ONEX.TO directly in the Trade Log. The Special Assignation allows for a cleaner trade entry.
