Performance review for self-directed investors
Get better at investing. Measurably.
Know where you stand. Lean into what works. Cut what doesn’t. A Monthly Report on your own trades.
Read-only. We never see your password and never keep your account number. What we can and can’t see
- Where you stand
- 6.7 points ahead of the market over 12 months.
- Why
- Stock picks added 6.4. Holding cash cost 1.2.
- Lean in
- Your edge is in what you hold longest.
- Pull back
- Trades under a week cost you.
Every account, one picture
All your brokerage accounts, analysed as one portfolio.
SnapTrade API Integration
xsreturns
Every account, weighted by what it held each day
Screens show illustrative figures and made-up companies
The feedback loop your portfolio never had.
Your balance tells you whether you made money. It doesn’t tell you whether you’re good at this, which of your instincts to trust, or what to stop doing. Professionals get that answer every quarter. xsreturns gives it to you every month, from your own trades.
Athletes
review the film.
Fund managers
sit through an attribution review every quarter.
You
get a balance. No breakdown, no comparison, no record of what you were thinking.
The loop is the product
Five steps. Then again next month.
A portfolio tracker tells you what happened. This is built to show you whether you’re getting better.
- 1
Know where you stand.
An honest baseline: your return beside the market and beside a benchmark you choose, with the risk you took to get it.
Dashboard · vs. Benchmark
Last 12 months+18.7%the market +12.0%Illustrative figuresstep 1 - 2
Know why.
Which decisions produced the result: your picks, your sector bets, your timing, your cash. In percent and dollars, and it adds up.
Portfolio Attribution · Position Attribution
Where the +18.7% came fromThe market gave you +12.0. You added +6.7.Stock picks +6.4 pts Sector bets +2.1 pts Market timing +0.5 pts Trading −0.3 pts Sector timing −0.8 pts Holding cash −1.2 pts Illustrative figuresstep 2The lines behind “why”
The market
What an index fund would have made on the same money, on the same days. The baseline everything else is measured against.
Your stock picks
Each holding against its own sector. Not "tech went up": whether your tech beat tech.
Your sector bets
The mix you chose against the market’s. Overweight semis, underweight banks: this is where it shows.
Your timing
Moving in and out of sectors, and in and out of the market. Did the moves catch the swings?
Cash
The cost of sitting out. In a rising market it adds up quietly, and now you can see it.
Trading
What you made or lost trading during the day, against the closing price. Fees included.
- 3
Know yourself.
Where your edge actually lives, and where it leaks: by position size, by how long you hold, long against short, sector by sector.
Skill Insights
The hypotheses are drafted by AI from figures we measure; it is not allowed to write the numbers. They are about your own past decisions, and what you do with them is yours to decide.
Your stock picks, by how long you heldBeat sector Added Under a week 32% −1.9 pts 1 to 4 weeks 44% −0.4 pts 1 to 6 months 55% +2.3 pts Over 6 months 68% +6.4 pts Lean inYour edge is in what you hold longest.Pull backTrades under a week cost you.Illustrative figuresstep 3 - 4
Adjust deliberately.
Write the thesis before the trade. Check it after. See whether the thinking or the luck made the money.
Trading Journal
Example Co. Longwritten Mar 4- Thesis
- Pricing has reset and margins follow. The market is treating a bad year as permanent.
- Breaks if
- Gross margin stays under 40% for two more quarters.
- The trade
- Opened Mar 4 · added twice · closed Sep 12
- Post-mortem
- Thesis right, made money. The process working.
Illustrative figuresstep 4 - 5
Repeat monthly.
When each month closes, your record is brought up to date, your hypotheses are rewritten from it, and each of last month’s is checked against what you actually did. Getting better is a habit, and this is the appointment.
Every month
When the month closes- Aug 1Monthly Report issued
- Sep 1Monthly Report issued
- Oct 1Monthly Report issued
- Nov 1Monthly Report issued. Hypotheses rewritten.
Illustrative figuresstep 5
How it starts
Connect through SnapTrade
Link your brokerage through SnapTrade’s API. We read positions, balances and history. We never see your password.
We rebuild your record
Up to two years of your history, priced at every close and measured against the US total market, sector by sector.
Your first Monthly Report
Where you stand, why, and where your edge is. Holdings and trades refresh every day; your Monthly Report comes at the start of each month.
What we can and can’t see
We never see your password.
Your broker connects through SnapTrade’s API.
Connecting an account should not mean handing over the keys. Here is the whole of it, in both directions — including the part most companies leave out.
Your account connects through SnapTrade’s API. SnapTrade is a company whose only business is linking brokerage accounts securely: it authenticates with your broker and passes your account data to us through its API. They are SOC 2 Type II certified, run third-party penetration tests and a bug bounty, encrypt data in transit and at rest, and support Fidelity, Schwab, Robinhood, Vanguard, E*Trade and Interactive Brokers among others. Access is read-only and you can revoke it at any moment.
Never ours
- Your passwordFor most brokers you sign in on their own website. For the few that do not support it, SnapTrade handles the sign-in under encryption. Either way your credentials are never typed into xsreturns and never reach us.
- Your account numberYour broker shows us the last four digits. Where the full number appears inside transaction text, we strip it out before anything is saved.
- Your identity documentsNo Social Security number, no bank login, no tax forms. We never ask for them and have no way to receive them.
What we do read
- What you hold, and what you tradedPositions, transactions and balances. This is the analysis — there is no way to work out where your return came from without it.
- Which broker, and the account’s typeEnough to apply the right rules: a retirement account cannot short, and each broker reports cash differently.
We say this plainly because the opposite would be easy to claim and easy to catch. Your holdings are the report — and nothing beyond them is collected.
Nothing here is a dark pattern. We do not sell your data, share it with advertisers, or use it for anything other than producing your report. There is no second purpose.
Disconnect whenever you like, from us or from inside your brokerage. Ask us to delete your data and we delete it. Read the privacy policy or write to privacy@xsreturns.com.