How to Read Your Brokerage Statement
The Sections, Briefly
Nearly every statement contains these, in roughly this order:
- Account identification. Your details, the account number and type, and the account's base currency.
- Valuation summary. What the account was worth at the start and end of the period.
- Holdings. Each position, its quantity, price and value, usually with a cost figure.
- Transactions. Every buy, sell, deposit and withdrawal in the period.
- Income. Dividends and interest received.
- Fees and charges. Commissions and account fees.
That is the table-stakes part. The rest of this article is about using it.
Find the Number You Came For
| You want to know | Look at | The trap in it |
|---|---|---|
| What am I worth? | Valuation summary | A snapshot on the closing date. Says nothing about how you got there. |
| How am I doing? | Holdings, with cost | Any return figure shown ignores when you added money. |
| What did it cost me? | Fees and charges | Spread and FX margin are usually not itemised anywhere. |
| What income did I get? | Income section | May be gross or net of tax withheld, and brokers differ. |
The second row is the one that misleads most often. A broker showing "+12%" is generally comparing value against cost, which takes no account of the fact that most of your money may have arrived last month. That is why a separate return figure exists at all, and why yours may legitimately differ from your broker's. Our guide to money-weighted vs time-weighted return covers the two ways of measuring it.
The Three Places a Statement Disagrees With Reality
These are the ones worth knowing about, because in each case the statement is not wrong exactly, but it is answering a slightly different question from the one you think.
Cost Basis Is the Broker's Calculation, Not a Fact
The cost figure beside each holding was computed under one particular method, and different methods produce different answers for the same holding. It can also arrive incomplete after a transfer between brokers, since the receiving broker may not have your original purchase history.
This matters because cost basis is what a gain is measured against. See capital gains basics for what depends on it, and keep your own record of what you paid rather than assuming the statement will always carry it.
Income May Be Gross or Net
Dividends from foreign holdings usually arrive with tax already deducted at source. Some brokers show the gross amount, some the net, and some show both in places that are easy to conflate.
If you are trying to work out what you actually earned, or what tax you have already paid, this distinction is the whole question. Tracking dividends covers the practice, including why the deduction is easy to miss entirely.
Currency Conversion Happened on the Broker's Terms
For anything not in your account's base currency, the statement shows a converted figure. The rate used, and the date it was applied, were chosen by the broker, and there is often a margin built into that rate which appears nowhere as a fee.
Two brokers can therefore show different home-currency values for identical holdings, and neither is lying. See currency gain for separating the currency effect from the asset's own performance.
Account Statement Versus Activity Statement
Worth knowing, because it decides which file is useful.
The account statement is the periodic PDF. It summarises: balances, holdings, totals for the period. Good for a quick check, close to useless for anything else, because a PDF is not data.
The activity statement, transaction report or CSV export lists every individual transaction with its date, quantity, price and fees. This is the one worth downloading and keeping, because it is the only one you can reconcile against, import anywhere, or hand to an accountant.
If your broker offers both, get the second. If you only ever download one file a year, make it that.
A Short Reconciliation Habit
Quarterly is enough, and it takes a few minutes:
Check the transactions you remember making actually appear, with the right quantities and prices.
Check the income you expected arrived, and note whether the figure is gross or net.
Check the fees against what you were told they would be. Unexpected charges are easier to query within weeks than within years.
Download the activity statement and keep it somewhere that is not your broker's website.
That last point is not paranoia about brokers failing. It is that access to history routinely disappears when you close an account, switch provider, or find that the download only goes back two years.
Getting the Data Out and Keeping It
Turbobulls imports transaction files rather than connecting to your broker: CSV and XLSX. You pick the broker, upload the file, and if it does not match what you picked you get a hint offering to switch. Supported formats include a generic CSV with manual mapping, the Interactive Brokers activity statement, XTB, TradeVille, Revolut (wallet and personal), ING Romania, Raiffeisen Romania and Salt Bank.
The import preview marks duplicates before anything is written, and the commit is atomic, so a re-import of an overlapping period does not quietly double your holdings. That is the reassurance that matters the first time you import a file you are not sure about.
Once in, cost basis is tracked per lot, so each purchase keeps its own price and date rather than becoming a blended average, which is precisely the detail statements lose. Export is available on every plan, free included, and is never paywalled, so your history stays portable.
Turn a Statement Into Something Usable
The Full Picture: Read These Next
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: How long should I keep statements?
Longer than your broker does. Retention requirements for your own tax records vary by country and are frequently several years, while broker download windows are often shorter than that. The practical rule is to keep the annual activity statement indefinitely, since it is a small file and impossible to recreate once access ends.Q: My broker's return differs from my tracker's. Who is right?
Usually both, measuring different things. A broker typically compares current value against cost, which ignores when your money arrived. A money-weighted return accounts for the timing of every deposit and withdrawal. If you have been adding money regularly the two will differ, sometimes by a lot, and neither is an error.Q: What if I find an error?
Raise it with the broker promptly and in writing, with the statement and the date to hand. Most discrepancies turn out to be corporate actions applied on one side only, fees charged in a different period, or currency converted on a different date. Keep your own record either way, since a query is much easier to make when you can show what you expected.Q: Do I need statements for tax?
Generally you need the underlying detail rather than the summary: what you bought and sold, when, at what price, the fees, and any tax already withheld. That is the activity statement rather than the periodic PDF, which is another reason to download the former. What your own country requires is a question for your tax authority or an accountant.Turbobulls is a tracking and analytics tool, not an investment adviser. Nothing here is investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Do your own research or consult a licensed professional.
Your History, Out of the PDF
Turbobulls imports broker transaction files, flags duplicates before writing anything, and keeps per-lot cost basis that statements routinely lose.
- CSV and XLSX imports, with a hint if the file does not match the broker
- Interactive Brokers activity statement among the supported formats
- Import preview marks duplicates, with an atomic commit
- Cost basis per lot, with prices and dates preserved
- Export on every plan, free included, never paywalled
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