desktop app vs mobile app portfolio balance difference
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Is anybody experiencing the same problem, please check !
Yes. And you can just as well forget about solving it.
Initially I did not respond because you talked about the PRT desktop platform and the (I assumed) PRT mobile app. One quite crucial side note : forget about the mobile app anyway. This is less than useless. Hence I do not know about difference with that app. However :
- There are indeed huge unexplainable differences between PRT Desktop and IBKR’s Trader Workstation (TWS – desktop platform).
- There are again other huge differences between IBKR’s TWS and IBKR’s mobile app (which is more than super).
- So we usually have 3 different portfolio amounts (gain per day) but the good news is : PRT Desktop is always correct.
I must have a 100+ screenshots for analysing the differences because indeed this is about a lot of money (10K+++).
The benefit : While I trade mainly USA assets, over here in Europe in the evening I solely use my phone to monitor (the PRT desktop at hand for emergencies). The one day my phone may show 10K+ more than the PRT desktop (thus 10K+ more than reality), which I like to see as extra gain but tend to forget. The next day the bummer on the statement is my share because it really was 10K+ less. … The other day my phone may show 10K+ too few, which I do not tend to forget. 🙂 So no surprise in the next day’s statement.
I learned to live with it, because explanations are not there. The golden rule should be (but it isn’t) : TWS is always right (for those who don’t know, this is the 1:1 representative for what we do in PRT with IB as broker). But this is not true. PRT is always right. Always. How to know ?
-> Because the Statement of the next day connects to the end values of your PRT screen.
… which is quite tough to interpret to begin with because you’d have to know about settlement times (also see below).Possible explanations :
- Future settlement times which are not respected well during real time operation for TWS and TWS Mobile (mainly referring to Europe Futures which settle at 17:30). Also notice that even in PRT after 17:30 further gain in DAX etc. just counts as gain fr that day (while it really will be for the next day).
- Future (partial) sellings or purchases after Settlement which are counted-in in a different fashion.
- Assets bought/sold pre-market (mind you, this also confuses PRT so you need to take those into account seriously for the remainder of the trading day).
The key takeaway of this all is more crucial than you’d expect :
Everyone at PRT will tell you that TWS is the master in this, hence nobody knows what to look for really and they move the problem a kind of (positively) out of the way by referring to TWS, might you use that coincidentally. Otherwise what I can’t find after years of analysis, PRT can’t for sure because PRT is the correct one.Lastly, I could only come to this conclusion finally after I indeed could connect a day’s endings (looking at the various screens) to the received Statement next morning. Say that this may take you a year to grasp all, although it will depend on what you exactly trade and how;
Coincidentally I have a super simple example on-screen :
That middle figure (9942) is a German stock which was on my TWS screen yesterday the whole day. However, Germany was closed (Dec. 31) and IBKR does not reset this values to zero. Meanwhile I have been looking at 9942 too much Portfolio for this stock alone (I have a few more). This abusively shows in TWS, this case does not show in TWS Mobile, and it does not show in PRT (good).
Again, a more simple example does not exist, but it is one just the same and indeed the 10K difference was my share because of this.Watch out : I thus never talked about PRT Mobile, while your question / stance was about there something being wrong. Well, it will be, because PRT Desktop is always correct (BUT as said, don’t be confused by pre-market orders, you’d had to apply via TWS or else they can’t exist and thus also can’t confuse).
Does this help a little ? Got ideas yourself now ? if so, please share them because I too like to learn.
Peter
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