How to Track Your Investments
A comprehensive guide to recording and monitoring your stock and cryptocurrency holdings.
Table of Contents
1. Understanding Asset Types
WalletMap supports three asset categories: bank accounts for cash and deposits, stocks for equity holdings (Taiwan and US markets), and crypto for cryptocurrency positions. Each type has specialized fields and automatic pricing from different data providers.
2. Adding Stock Holdings
Navigate to the Stocks page and click "Add Holding". Select the market (Taiwan or US), enter the stock symbol (e.g., 2330 for TSMC or AAPL for Apple), the stock name, number of shares, and your average purchase cost. The system will automatically fetch the current price and calculate your unrealized profit/loss.
3. Adding Crypto Holdings
Go to the Crypto page and click "Add Holding". Enter the CoinGecko coin ID (e.g., "bitcoin", "ethereum"), the symbol (BTC, ETH), coin name, quantity held (supports up to 12 decimal places), and your average cost in USD. Select the wallet type (exchange, hot wallet, or cold wallet) and optionally name the wallet.
4. Monitoring Performance
Your dashboard shows unrealized P/L for each holding, calculated from your average cost and the current market price. The daily change indicator tracks how your portfolio moves each day. Use the Charts page to visualize trends over weeks, months, or years.
5. Exporting Data for Tax Purposes
When tax season arrives, go to Settings and use the Excel Export feature. Select the asset types you need and toggle "Include live prices" for current valuations. The exported spreadsheet includes cost basis, current values, and unrealized gains — all the data your accountant needs.
Common mistakes and pro tips
Mixing exchange and self-custody crypto
Easiest crypto pitfall to fall into. BTC sitting on Binance and BTC in your cold wallet add up to the same total, but the counterparty risk is wildly different. Track them as two separate holdings in WalletMap, label them in the wallet name field, and the dashboard sums them automatically — but you can always see how much is actually self-custodied.
Recording cost basis but skipping transactions
Many people add a position with just "current shares + average cost" and stop there. That works for current valuation, but you lose the ability to ask "how often did I trade this stock this year, and when did I buy?" Recommendation: log every buy/sell as a transaction. A few extra entries now save a lot when you want to review later.
Forgetting to update average cost after adding to a position
If you add to a position without updating the average cost, the unrealized P/L calculation drifts. WalletMap doesn't auto-compute weighted averages on your behalf (deliberate design choice — avoids guessing wrong). After adding, manually update the average cost in the position edit page.
Treating high-dividend ETFs like regular stocks
Dividend-heavy ETFs (like 0056, 00878 in Taiwan) have payouts that materially affect total return. If reinvested dividends matter to you, log each dividend as a separate transaction (type="dividend") in addition to the position. Your annual return calculation will end up much closer to reality.
Related reading
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