Online Broker Trade History Not Doing the Job

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Article source: http://armencomp.blogspot.com/. Used with author's permission.

Let me start by saying that...

Most online brokers do not make it easy for their clients!

There are absolutely no standards for trade history reporting from one broker to the next. This presents a real challenge for any trader who wants to analyze his or her trade history.

How does one get their trades into some sort of trade analysis software or spreadsheet? How can this be done for several different brokers?

What do they provide?

Some brokers provide simple trade history reports while others provide very complex statements or reports which have so much HTML formatting that it makes it virtually impossible for any one to copy and paste the information into a personal spreadsheet! Few provide a comma or tab delimited text file or Excel file download, and even these differ greatly in column formatting.

A few brokers have interfaces to personal finance software programs such as Quicken or MS Money. But these programs were never designed to handle the volumes of trades made by the active trader, and most have serious limitations when it comes to properly matching these to IRS requirements.

Active traders need to analyze their profits and losses. Trades must be imported and matched. This needs to do be done simply and regularly if they are to ever get a handle on their trading gains and losses.

This may be the most overlooked problem facing active traders today.

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