Why Grafioschtrader (GT) exists

For seve­ral years I used a port­fo­lio manage­ment appli­ca­ti­on that met my initi­al needs. Over time I rea­li­sed that tran­sac­tion and cus­t­ody cos­ts have a con­sidera­ble impact on the over­all return of a port­fo­lio. So I loo­ked for dif­fe­rent online bro­kers that offe­red the most favoura­ble tra­ding con­di­ti­ons for my invest­ments. To this day only a com­bi­na­ti­on of seve­ral tra­ding plat­forms meets my needs. As a Swiss inves­tor the­re is the addi­tio­nal aspect that, soo­ner or later, invest­ments are made in for­eign currencies.

Over time you lose track of how much is inves­ted in what. I thought it did not have to be this way and, as a soft­ware deve­lo­per, I threw mys­elf into the Grafioschtrader adven­ture. With GT I now have an over­view of the held posi­ti­ons, per­for­mance and account balan­ces per port­fo­lio or accu­mu­la­ted across all portfolios.

Try out GT

You can try out GT via the GT app. In addi­ti­on the­re is a user manu­al and a YouTube chan­nel. Create your own account or use one of the fol­lo­wing exis­ting accounts:

E‑mail	Password	Language
gt1@grafioschtrader.info	gt1	German
gt2@grafioschtrader.info	gt2	German
gt3@grafioschtrader.info	gt3	German
gt4@grafioschtrader.info	gt4	German
gt5@grafioschtrader.info	gt5	English
gt6@grafioschtrader.info	gt6	English

What GT can do

• The soft­ware is free and open source: GT is released as open source and can be found on GitHub.
• Multi-ten­an­cy: GT can be ope­ra­ted for a group of inves­tors or in sin­gle-user mode.
• Web appli­ca­ti­on: GT is a web appli­ca­ti­on and deli­vers the clea­rest results in a desk­top web browser.
• Several port­fo­li­os with cur­ren­cy accounts: Reproduction of seve­ral port­fo­li­os with one or more secu­ri­ties accounts and one or more bank accounts.
• Multiple cur­ren­ci­es: Trading of secu­ri­ties in dif­fe­rent currencies.
• Trading sin­ce the turn of the mill­en­ni­um: Basic sup­port for his­to­ri­cal pri­ce data from the year 2000. Please note that obtai­ning pri­ce data for secu­ri­ties that are no lon­ger traded may be a problem.
• Different finan­cial instru­ments: shares, bonds, ETFs, secu­ri­ties wit­hout pri­ce data, short ETFs, CFDs, forex.
• Price data from various sources: Historical and intra­day pri­ces are obtai­ned from various free­ly acces­si­ble data sources.
• Import of tran­sac­tions: Import of sin­gle or mul­ti­ple PDFs with secu­ri­ties tran­sac­tions. Account tran­sac­tions can also be loa­ded via CSV file.
• Standing orders: Recurring ent­ries such as savings plans as well as regu­lar depo­sits and withdrawals.
• Watchlists with pri­ce histo­ry: Watchlists with charts (line, OHLC and cand­le­stick dia­grams) and indi­vi­du­al tech­ni­cal indicators.
• Evaluations by asset class: Evaluations accor­ding to the com­mon asset clas­ses such as shares, bonds, real estate, com­mo­di­ties, etc.
• Evaluations and reports: Performance over free­ly sel­ec­ta­ble time peri­ods as well as over­views of divi­dends and inte­rest and of the tran­sac­tion cos­ts incurred.
• Correlation matrix: Examination of the cor­re­la­ti­on bet­ween instru­ments to assess diversification.
• Multilingual: The user inter­face is available in German and English.

Who GT is suitable for

GT is an attempt to repro­du­ce port­fo­li­os in line with rea­li­ty, which is why the­re are accounts just like at your online bro­ker. Every ent­ry is lin­ked to a cash account, so the ent­ries are repro­du­ced in line with your tra­ding platform.

• The inves­tor who does not want to ent­rust their finan­cial data to a non-trans­pa­rent plat­form. You can host GT yours­elf; a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB (pos­si­bly also 2 GB) of memo­ry is sufficient.
• A share­hol­der who wants a histo­ry of all their trades. You can view all clo­sed posi­ti­ons at any time.
• The pri­va­te inves­tor who wants to know how their cur­ren­cy gains deve­lop. The cur­ren­cy gain on the for­eign cur­ren­cy accounts is shown continuously.
• The cost-con­scious inves­tor who wants to keep an eye on their tran­sac­tion and cus­t­ody cos­ts.
• An inves­tors’ club that wants to host its own GT ins­tance and whe­re one mem­ber is hap­py to take care of the tech­ni­cal aspects.
• Investors with seve­ral port­fo­li­os at dif­fe­rent tra­ding plat­forms. GT pro­vi­des infor­ma­ti­on per port­fo­lio and can pre­sent it in aggre­ga­ted form.

Who GT is not intended for

Before you was­te your time unneces­s­a­ri­ly with GT, you should con­sider the following:

• The day trader lacks real-time pri­ces.
• Investors who want to mana­ge their tra­ding detached from cash accounts.
• The inves­tor who has only one port­fo­lio at a sin­gle online bro­ker and for whom that bro­ker’s eva­lua­tions are sufficient.
• There are inves­tors who crea­te port­fo­li­os accor­ding to cer­tain cri­te­ria, such as a divi­dend port­fo­lio. GT does not sup­port such an approach. On the con­tra­ry, the aggre­ga­ted eva­lua­ti­on across real port­fo­li­os at dif­fe­rent tra­ding plat­forms is the goal.
• GT will not pro­vi­de sup­port for sup­po­sedly real public port­fo­li­os from users. The point of the­se pos­si­ble fake port­fo­li­os escapes the deve­lo­per of GT. Most important­ly, a port­fo­lio is indi­vi­du­al and hop­eful­ly stron­gly influen­ced by the life cir­cum­s­tances of the respec­ti­ve inves­tor. Reducing this who­le to a few figu­res and charts is not­hing other than dis­in­for­ma­ti­on.

Where GT does not work

GT is defi­ni­te­ly not an all-in-one won­der solution:

• For inves­tors who want to mana­ge tran­sac­tions with GT befo­re the year 2000. GT con­sis­t­ent­ly imple­ments two-digit years.
• In GT the com­bi­na­ti­on of the ISIN and the cur­ren­cy of an instru­ment is uni­que. So the same ETF in EUR can­not be recor­ded, for exam­p­le, for both the Frankfurt and Stuttgart tra­ding venues.
• For inves­tors who want to assign an instru­ment to a sector/theme and countries/regions at the same time.
• For inves­tors from Switzerland, Germany or the USA who need a Valoren no., German secu­ri­ties iden­ti­fi­ca­ti­on num­ber (WKN) or CUSIP num­ber. GT uses the International Securities Identification Number ISIN and the not always unam­bi­guous tickers/symbols.

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