Questrade portfolio tracking

Questrade is a self-directed brokerage with a long history in Canada, and self-directed investors are exactly the people most likely to hold accounts in more than one place, an older RRSP at a bank, a TFSA where the fees were lowest, a taxable account opened later.

That spread is the subject of this page.

What no brokerage can do, including this one

Start with the boundary, because everything else follows from it:

A brokerage can only report on the accounts it holds. It cannot see what you hold anywhere else, and it is not built to.

That is a fact about where the data lives, not a criticism. Questrade reports on Questrade accounts accurately as far as its own records go. The gap opens the moment part of your portfolio sits somewhere else, and it opens in three specific places.

Your combined return is not any account's return

A return is a ratio, not a quantity. You cannot average the percentages your institutions each report and arrive at the return on your portfolio, the arithmetic does not work that way, and the answer you get describes no real holding. A combined return has to be computed from the combined value and the combined cash flows, which means every account has to be in one place before the calculation can start.

Which return you want is a separate question with a real answer. Time-weighted and money-weighted return measure different things, and the gap between them is itself informative.

Your cost base spans institutions, and your broker's number does not

This is the one with tax consequences. Canadian rules treat identical property held by one taxpayer as a single pool, regardless of which institution holds it. Units of the same ETF at two brokerages are one weighted-average cost base over the combined holding, not two separate calculations.

Neither broker can perform that calculation, because neither can see the other side. The figure each one reports is an account-local book value, which is a different thing from your adjusted cost base, a distinction the CRA itself draws, and one that matters most after a transfer in kind, when the receiving institution may have no record of what you originally paid.

Three pages go into this properly: adjusted cost base, explained, pooling cost base across brokerages for the two-institution case, and adjusted cost base for a Questrade account for US-dollar holdings and reinvested distributions.

Your real concentration is hidden by the split

Two accounts that each look diversified can hold the same few names twice. Allocation, concentration and single-issuer exposure are properties of everything you own together, so a per-account view systematically understates them. This is the least discussed of the three and the one most likely to surprise someone.

What a tracker adds, stated narrowly

Questrade users have a particular reason to think about tooling: Passiv's paid tier is bundled for Questrade accounts, which makes rebalancing cheap to add. Rebalancing and measurement are different jobs, and the Passiv comparison sets out which is which. Neither substitutes for the other.

What Luum does with a read-only connection:

• Brings your accounts at Questrade and at other institutions into one view, registered and taxable together.
• Computes time-weighted and money-weighted return across the combined portfolio, and the gap between them.
• Keeps an adjusted cost base record pooled across accounts, on the average-cost method.
• Measures allocation and drift against targets you set, and reports concentration across the whole holding.

What it does not do, on purpose

Worth being equally clear about, because the honest version of this page needs both halves:

• It places no trades and moves no money. The connection is read-only and there is no order path in the product. Anything you decide to do, you do at your brokerage.
• It is not advice. The analysis is educational, and it does not assess whether a holding suits you.
• It does not apply the superficial loss rule to its cost base record. If you are realising losses, that rule can deny them, and a tool built for it is the right place to check.
• It does not replace your brokerage's own reporting, and it does not replace CRA My Account for contribution room.
• It is not a substitute for your own records. Two independently computed figures that agree are worth more than one you cannot check.

Whether this is worth doing at all

If everything you own is at Questrade, probably not, its own reporting covers the single-institution case and adding a second tool buys you a second opinion rather than a missing capability.

If you hold accounts in more than one place, the three gaps above are not going to close on their own, because no institution is positioned to close them. Either something aggregates, or the combined view does not exist. A spreadsheet is a legitimate answer to that too, and where a spreadsheet breaks down is honest about which parts it handles well.

Common questions

Does connecting my account let a tracker place trades?

No. The connection is read-only: it can see positions and transactions and it has no order path. Nothing in it can buy, sell, or move money out of your account. If a tool asks for the ability to trade, that is a different kind of integration and a different decision.

Do I have to give up my brokerage's own reporting?

No, and you should not. Your brokerage remains the authoritative record of what it holds and what it charged you. A tracker adds the view that spans institutions, which is the one your brokerage is not positioned to produce.

Why can my brokerage not just show me my cost base correctly?

Because for identical property the calculation is a property of the taxpayer rather than of the account, and pooling requires seeing every holding of that security across every institution. Your broker sees its own side accurately and cannot see the rest, so its figure is a book value for that account rather than your adjusted cost base.