Kernel’s new dashboard gives you a clearer view of how your investments are performing across your portfolio, groups, and individual assets.
Since the new dashboard uses a different calculation method from the legacy dashboard, you may notice some differences in the returns you see.
How performance is calculated on the new dashboard
The new dashboard shows performance at three levels:
Portfolio level: your all-time return across all deposits and activity in your account, including your wallet, current holdings, and sold positions
Group level: your performance across any custom asset groups you’ve created
Individual asset level: the return for each asset
All of these calculations use XIR, a money-weighted return method. By including the timing of your investments, returns may differ from what you see on other platforms or simple calculators.
This method takes into account:
when money was deposited
when investments were bought or sold
the size and timing of each cash flow
the current value of your investment
As a result, performance on the new dashboard is not a simple gain/loss percentage and usually can’t be worked out accurately by hand. Customers who try to calculate returns manually may get a different answer, as simple calculations don’t account for the timing of contributions, withdrawals, buys, and sells. This is expected behaviour with money-weighted return calculations.
At the moment, the dashboard shows all-time returns only.
Why your portfolio return will not match the sum of your assets
Your portfolio-level return will not equal the combined return of the assets currently showing in your portfolio.
This is due to the portfolio-level return including more than just the assets you currently hold. It can also include:
sold positions
cash in your wallet
wallet transactions such as PIE tax payments
other account activity that affects your total return over time
This is why customers see a difference between their portfolio return and the returns shown for individual assets.
How distributions and dividends are treated
Performance can also vary by individual product type depending on how distributions and dividends are handled.
For example:
US shares & US ETFs: dividends paid to your wallet are counted as gains for that asset
Funds with reinvested distributions: reinvested distributions are already reflected in the asset balance, so they are not counted separately in the same way
Funds with cash distributions to the wallet: these are currently excluded from the individual asset return calculation
Portfolio-level returns include both distributions and dividends as they account for all wallet activity.
What’s different compared to the legacy dashboard
The new dashboard uses a new calculation approach designed to give an improved view of performance.
On the legacy dashboard, returns were not shown at the individual asset level, as we were not able to always separate out wallet (portfolio) transactions from individual asset transactions.
The new dashboard is designed to improve on this by calculating returns more precisely across different account activities and asset groupings.
KiwiSaver performance
KiwiSaver performance has not changed. KiwiSaver still uses the same methodology as the legacy dashboard.
US Shares and US ETFs
The new dashboard also shows percentage returns for directly held US shares and US ETFs, which were not previously available on the legacy dashboard.
As this is a new feature, there isn’t a direct historical comparison.
What features are still coming
We’re continuing to improve the dashboard experience. Features still to come include:
Time-based performance filters, such as:
1 year
6 months
3 months
1 month
1 week
What features are already here
Relevant period filtering, so you’ll only see time periods that make sense for how long you’ve been invested. For example: You won’t see 1-year returns if you have only held the asset for 6 months.
Annualised returns for periods of 1 year or more.
Need help understanding your return?
If something doesn’t look right, it may help to check:
whether you’ve had any recent deposits, sells, or pending orders
whether you’re comparing portfolio-level performance with asset-level performance
whether the individual investment includes distributions (funds) or dividend payments (US shares and US ETFs)
If you’re still unsure, our team can help you understand what you’re seeing.
I miss the graph from the legacy dashboard. How do I recreate that?
You can use the Groups feature to organise your assets in a way that matches how you like to view your holdings.
For example, if you create a group containing all of your fund holdings, this can help recreate a similar graph view to what you may have used.
Groups are flexible, so you can set them up in whatever way makes the most sense for you.
Understanding the difference between Goals and Groups
While Groups are designed to help you track the performance and returns of specific clusters of assets, Goals are all about tracking your progress toward a specific aspirational target, like your first home or next holiday. In the Goals view, we focus on dollar tracking to show you how close you are to reaching your financial milestone, rather than showing percentage performance. This allows you to keep your focus on the goal, while using Groups for a more granular look at how different parts of your portfolio (such as your global exposures versus local) are performing over time.