Reference

Glossary

Plain explanations of the terms you meet in BullBenchmark and in investing generally.

Benchmark: The yardstick you measure your portfolio against. Usually an index such as the S&P 500. A fair benchmark answers one question: would your money have done better in a simple index fund?
S&P 500: An index of roughly 500 large American companies, weighted by size. When people say "the market", this is usually what they mean. In BullBenchmark it is one of the two lines your portfolio is compared against.
Nasdaq 100: An index of the hundred largest non-financial companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange. In practice it behaves like a concentrated bet on American big tech. The honest mirror if your portfolio leans heavily into technology, and the second of the two lines your portfolio is compared against in BullBenchmark.
ETF (Exchange Traded Fund): A fund that trades on the stock exchange like a single share. One purchase can give you hundreds or thousands of underlying companies, which is why ETFs are the usual building block for long-term portfolios.
Cost basis: What a holding originally cost you, including the effect of buying at different prices over time. BullBenchmark uses the average cost method: total amount invested divided by the number of shares. Your profit is always measured against this base.
Dividend: A cash payment a company or fund makes to its shareholders, usually quarterly, semi-annually or annually. BullBenchmark shows both what you have received (from your broker statements) and what your current holdings are expected to pay.
Ex-dividend date: The cut-off for a dividend. Own the share before this date and the payment is yours, even if you sell on the day itself. Buy on or after it and the dividend goes to the seller.
Withholding tax: Tax a country deducts from dividends before the money reaches you. American dividends typically arrive 15 percent lighter for European investors. BullBenchmark reads the net amounts from your statements, so you see what you actually received.
Time-weighted return (TWR): Your investment performance with the timing of your deposits stripped out. This is the number that can fairly be compared with an index, and the method professional funds report.
Money-weighted return (MWR): Your personal outcome, including the effect of when you added or withdrew money. The gap between your MWR and TWR is roughly the price, or profit, of your timing.
ISIN: The international identification number of a security, such as US0378331005 for Apple. Broker exports use ISINs to identify exactly what you traded, which is how BullBenchmark matches your positions to market data.
FX (foreign exchange) rate: The exchange rate between two currencies. If you buy American shares with euros, part of your result comes from the shares and part from the dollar. BullBenchmark converts everything at the historical rate of each transaction day, so your numbers stay honest.
DRIP (dividend reinvestment): Automatically using dividend payments to buy more shares. It is the quiet engine of compounding: the payments themselves start earning payments.
Realized and unrealized gains: Unrealized gains exist on paper while you still hold a position. Realized gains are locked in when you sell. Both, plus dividends and minus fees, make up your true result.
Total return: The return of an investment with its dividends included and reinvested, as opposed to the price return, which counts only the change in price. Indexes are published in both versions. Since your own portfolio keeps its dividends, only the total-return version of an index is a fair benchmark.
Base currency: The single currency your whole portfolio is expressed in, usually the one you live on. Everything else is converted into it at the rate that applied on the day of each transaction, so that a gain is never confused with an exchange-rate movement.
Cash-flow replay: The method behind an honest benchmark: every deposit and withdrawal you made is repeated into an index tracker on the same date and for the same amount. Both portfolios then share your timing, so what is left between them is the effect of your decisions.
Ghost portfolio: The result of a cash-flow replay: the portfolio of an investor who received your exact deposits and held none of your opinions. It is the line BullBenchmark draws next to yours, and the only benchmark that cannot be flattered by lucky timing.
Accumulating and distributing funds: A distributing fund pays its income out to you; an accumulating fund reinvests it inside the fund, so your holding grows in value instead. The choice changes when you see cash and, in several countries, when tax falls due.
Savings plan: A standing instruction to buy a fixed amount of a fund or share at a fixed interval, known in German as a Sparplan. Each execution is a separate purchase with its own date and price, which is why a savings plan produces a long transaction file and an unusually clean basis for measuring returns.
Corporate action: Anything a company or fund does that changes your holding without you trading: a share split, a merger, a spin-off, a change of name or identifier. Corporate actions are the quietest way for a share count in a spreadsheet to drift away from reality.
XIRR: The spreadsheet function that computes a money-weighted return from a list of dated cash flows plus today's value. It is the practical way to work out your internal rate of return by hand.
Yield on cost: The expected annual dividend of a position divided by what you originally paid for it, instead of by today's price. It describes how a long-held position has developed; the current yield describes what a new euro put in today would earn.
Projected dividend income: What your current holdings are expected to pay out over the next twelve months, built from each company's declared rate and its payment history. It is a forecast rather than a promise, because dividends are declared one payment at a time.
Drawdown: The fall from a portfolio's highest value so far to its lowest point after that, expressed as a percentage. It measures the depth of the dip you sat through, which is a different question from where your return ended up.
Tracking difference: The gap between what an index fund actually returned and what its index returned over the same period. Costs inside the fund, tax on its dividends and the way it holds its positions all end up in this one number.
Stock split: A company multiplying its share count and dividing its price by the same factor, so the value of your holding does not change while the number of shares does. Your cost basis per share changes with it, which is why an unadjusted record drifts after a split.
Sub-portfolio: A group you assign holdings to, so that a set of positions can be measured on its own. Retirement money, a satellite of single stocks and an account held for a child can arrive in one import and still be read separately.
Contribution to return: How much of your total return came from each position, weighted by how large that position was and how long you held it. A small holding with a large percentage gain can contribute less than a big holding with a modest one.
Dividend growth: The rate at which a company or fund has raised its dividend over time, usually stated as an average annual percentage. It describes payments that have already been made and carries no commitment about the next one.
Dividend yield: The annual dividend a holding is expected to pay divided by its current price. Because the price is in the denominator, a rising yield can mean a raised payment or a falling share price.
Annualized return: A return over several years restated as the constant yearly rate that would have produced the same end result. It makes periods of different lengths comparable; it does not mean any individual year looked like that.
Portfolio weight: The share of your total portfolio value that one position, sector, country or currency accounts for. Weights move on their own as prices change, without you buying or selling anything.
Rebalancing: Buying and selling to bring the weights in a portfolio back to the ones chosen earlier. The word describes the action; whether and when it happens is a question about your own plan.
TER (total expense ratio): The yearly cost of running a fund, expressed as a percentage of the money invested in it and taken out of the fund's value rather than billed to you. Because it is deducted inside the fund, it never appears as a line in your broker export.
Dividend calendar: A month-by-month view of the dividends your holdings have paid and are expected to pay. It turns an irregular stream of payments from several markets into an income schedule you can read in advance.
Market value: What your holdings are worth right now: each position's share count multiplied by its latest price, converted into your base currency. It says nothing about what you paid, which is why it is always read next to your cost basis.