End of Year Accounting

1/2/14 - Happy New Year!

While watching Swim Lessons today I learned something new and useful. Now that it's 2014 you may have noticed that the year-to-date totals on your TOS Account Statement have reset. Here's an easy way to look back at 2013.

This is my account statement under the TOS Monitor tab. Minimize all sub-sections except for Profits and Losses and Account Summary by clicking the respective blue triangle. BTW, this is my paper account in case you couldn't tell. I customized the column headings by first right-clicking on any one of them. Then, I added P/L YTD and Mark Value. Mark Value is very useful in that it shows the market value of your positions if you were to close out now. Using a little math, you can also see that it is the difference between the Cash & Sweep total in the upper right and the Net Liquidating Value. P/L YTD obviously shows P/L for the current year and will come in handy when we look at 2013.

To look back at 2013, click on change dates viewed and set both the start and end dates to be 12/31/13 and click Ok. This will give us a snapshot of the last day of the year.

I then clicked on the P/L YTD column heading in order to sort by that column. Now, at a glance, I can easily see which symbols made or lost the most. This helps point to which ones I should analyze further to see why they were more or less profitable. Note that the column labeled Mark Value has changed to Close Value when looking in the past.