Tagging on Console: Trading journal & tracking goals

We launched Console 2.0 earlier this year, a complete rewrite of our entire backoffice and reporting system from scratch. While many assume that generating various types of reports is simple, it isn’t, especially when dealing with huge amounts of data across millions of customers and regularly dealing with complex edge cases such as arbitrary corporate actions, that change the entire trade history and P&L for customers. Besides, Console also has to deal with off-market transfers, FIFO breakdowns (hundreds of millions of records), generating tax filing ready P&L, and much more on a snappy, user-friendly interface that can pull reports in milliseconds. Console is probably already amongst the best and most comprehensive retail reporting platforms offered by any brokerage firm globally, and we continue to have many first time features lined up to be launched.

While we have spent a considerable part of our journey focusing on lowering costs, offering superior trading & investing products, financial education and more, our next big focus is finding ways to help clients do better with their money. We launched Nudge as a first step and are now excited to announce a new Nudge on Console – portfolio and trade tagging, which can be used as a trading journal and track your investing goals.

Trading journal using tags

A smart way to get better at trading and investing is to learn from what is working for you in your favour and what’s not. Make a note of the reasons for taking a particular trade or investment. It could be based on any factor – gut-based, indicator-based, advisor based, PE-based etc. Review these notes every once in a while to figure which ones are generating profits & which losses. Get better by doing less of what causes losses and more of what earns you profits.

Today, if you have to tag a trade or take a note for taking a trade and track profitability, you have to do it manually, which is cumbersome and perhaps why most traders don’t maintain them. You can now do this easily with the “Tags” feature.

Tagging orders on Kite

You can tag your trades while placing an order on Kite. All tags are synced on Console on the next day. To tag orders on the Kite app:

1. Tap on any instrument from the marketwatch.
2. Tap on Buy or Sell.
3. Scroll down and tap on Add tags.
4. Tap on the suggested tags or search for tags and tap on Apply.

To create a new tag on the Kite web:

1. On the order window, click on Tags.
2. Click on the Settings icon.
3. Click on New tag.
4. Select a color, enter the tag name and description and click on Save.

To apply a tag while placing orders:

1. Click on the respective tags.
2. Click on Buy/Sell.

The tags can be viewed in the order book.

Compared to Console tags, which can only be done at the end of the day, tagging on Kite is the optimal way to tag holdings and trades because it can be done while placing the order. When placing an order, clients have the option to select a maximum of 5 tags. It will soon be available on Coin for mutual funds.

Tagging on Console

To tag, go to the P&L report on Console.

Click on the context menu next to any security on the P&L and select view breakdown/tags.

In the P&L breakdown window, click on create and apply a tag to all trades.

Now enter the tag’s name and add a description of the tag you want to create, and hit save. The tag name has a 15 character restriction as different reports and platforms will use the tags for display purposes in multiple places. You can elaborate on the tag in the description box.

You can apply this tag to all the trades for this instrument in the breakdown (different trades that led to the P&L) or separate tags for each breakdown by clicking on edit tags.

Do note that the applied tags can take a few minutes to be applied. Once tagged, you can use the filter by tags in the P&L to view the profitability of your tags. You can also track your best and worst-performing tags on the Tag manager.

Note: Your tags are tagged to trades. If you search for a P&L period outside the tagged trade dates, you will not see any result. The charges shown on using the tag filter isn’t for the particular tag but all trades within the period selected on the P&L.

Goals using tags

While tags can be used as a trading journal, you can also use them to track investment goals. Like how you can tag P&L, you can do the same with your stock & MF holdings. You can tag your holding to goals like – Retirement, Kids education, Vacation, and more. You can then track these on the holdings page.

To create Goals, visit the holdings page on Console. Click on the context menu next to the desired stock and select view breakdown/tags.

Similar to tags in P&L, you can tag either the entire quantity of a particular security to a specific tag or tag the breakdown (buy trades that led to the holding). Again, the applied tags can take several minutes to reflect.

Once tagged, you can start filtering your portfolio by tags on the holding page to track your goals.

Example: Retirement goal

Do note that you can tag the entire quantity or tag the breakdown when tagging from your holdings page, which led to your total holdings. You can’t create your own breakdown of the holding and tag them differently, and the actual trade history is always tagged.

Note: If you exit your holdings, remember to tag your exit trades from the P&L breakdown as shown earlier. The P&L based on tags will only work where both the entry and exit trades are tagged.

Tag analytics

This page gives you an overview of your best & worst performing tags and a list of all the tags you’ve created. You can see this screen by clicking on “Tags” under “Portfolio” in the top bar on Console as shown below:

 

Why is maintaining a trading journal important?

While trading markets seems easy, it isn’t. It is actually the toughest way to make easy money. So unless you analyse your weakness and mistakes and try getting better every day, you could potentially lose unlimited amounts of money to the markets. We hope you start using tags to start that trading journal today, and this helps in your trading and investing journey.

This product is still in the beta stage. If you spot any issues or have suggestions for improvements, let us know on Trading Q&A.