Brokers

Lynx portfolio tracker: benchmark your Lynx portfolio against the S&P 500

We rebuild a Lynx history from the activity file you download and set it against an index in your own currency. Lynx is a white label of Interactive Brokers, so the activity statement it produces often has the same structure, and our tested Interactive Brokers reader frequently recognises it on the first attempt. Where it does not, nothing breaks: the columns are pointed out once, stored, and applied to every file with that layout afterwards.

What the file contains

An activity statement is not one table. It is several sections in a single file, each with headings of its own: trades, dividends, withholding tax, deposits and withdrawals, and a number of administrative sections that carry no events at all. Our Interactive Brokers reader walks those sections and skips the ones it does not need rather than refusing the whole file.

The trade rows carry the symbol, the quantity, the price and the commission, and the proceeds figure is negative on a purchase and positive on a sale. Dividends and the tax withheld on them arrive as separate sections, which is convenient: the gross payment and the deduction stay apart instead of collapsing into one net number. Deposits and withdrawals carry a settle date, and those dates are what the index comparison replays.

The export comes as CSV, and we read the file as it is: no renaming, no reformatting, no cleaning up in a spreadsheet first.

How the import works for Lynx

Lynx goes through the column mapper. You point at the date, the type, the amount and the quantity column once, we save that mapping to your account, and later uploads from the same broker are read without a question.

We do not print a click path here, because menu names move between releases and a wrong one costs you more time than no one at all. Look for the transaction history or the account statement of your Lynx account and take the machine-readable version of it over the PDF.

Try the file exactly as it comes before doing anything to it. When the layout matches the Interactive Brokers activity statement, the sections are read automatically and there is nothing for you to assign. When the statement was configured with a custom selection of fields, it may not match, and that is the moment the columns are set by hand. Either way, generate the statement over your full period rather than a single month, and take the comma separated version rather than a rendered report.

What to watch for with Lynx files

Sections, not columns. One file can hold trade rows and dividend rows with entirely different headings above them. Opening it in a spreadsheet and seeing ragged rows is the normal appearance of this format, not damage.

Dollars inside a euro account. Trades on American exchanges settle in dollars while the account may report in euros. The rate on the trade date is part of what you paid, and applying today's rate instead rewrites the past a little every time the currency moves.

Commission beside the trade. The commission is booked with the trade rather than inside the price. We keep it as a fee, so what the trading itself cost over a year stays visible.

Not every section is an event. Account information and statement headers sit in the file and contain nothing to calculate. They are skipped, and anything genuinely unrecognised is reported to you instead of being dropped in silence.

What you see after the upload

Your file becomes a verdict first: your time-weighted return next to the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 over the same period, with your own deposits replayed into the index so both sides carry the same timing. Under it sit your positions with their cost basis, the dividends you received and the income your holdings are expected to pay, your allocation across positions and currencies, and a year report you can keep for your records.

Because a Lynx statement usually carries dollar positions, the currency breakdown is worth opening first: it separates what the shares did from what the exchange rate did.

You can look at all of that on the demo portfolio before you upload anything of your own. The first two weeks are free and no card is asked for.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a special export from Lynx? You need an activity file that covers your whole period and lists transactions rather than a summary of today's positions. A statement generated for one month can be uploaded, but then you also need every other month. One long period is less work and leaves fewer opportunities for a gap to open between two files.

Why does an Interactive Brokers guide help me here? Lynx is built on the Interactive Brokers platform, which is why an exported statement often has the same shape. The practical result is that our tested Interactive Brokers reader usually recognises it without any mapping at all. If your file differs, the universal route still accepts it, and nothing about your account has to change.

What goes wrong most often with this file? A statement built from a custom field selection. If fields were removed when the report was configured, the quantity or the date that the calculation needs may not be in the file at all, and no mapping can invent a column that was never written. When something cannot be found, generate the statement again with the standard fields included.

Are dividends and the tax on them both kept? Yes, as separate amounts. The gross payment and the withholding are recorded apart, so income can be shown before and after tax instead of only as a net figure. That distinction also matters later, when you want to know how much foreign tax was deducted across a full year.