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Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

wealthfolio.app

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Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#91

Post by aketchum »

admn2 wrote: post #83

is Plaid inherently bad? Is having an automated way of pulling in real time data worth the security risk of authing into all your bank accounts? Genuinely asking as this seems great in theory, but I'm a bit confused what it looks like to manually keep it updated.

My company is an online lender - we use plaid so that users may instantly link their bank account. They have an alternative of verifying with micro-deposits, but that does take 2 days and the company gets less information on the user, so there are more manual verifications the user must do (provide paystub and id etc).

Plaid Cons:

- The end user must type their bank account credentials into a third party platform that uses their banks logo. It is terrible for general population cyber security because this is the exact type of you thing you should never do in general. However I do not know of any data leaks or info sec issues from Plaid specifically. As far as I know Plaid is totally safe with this information. Im sure they will be hacked eventually though - everyone is.

- Plaid shows the permission you are granting but the user can not make it more restrictive. For example the company with the plaid integration can choose from 1 to all off these functionalities (they all increase api cost though): KYC Verification, PII from the account, one time current balance, ongoing current balance check, all transactions for previous 2-24 months. The vendor chooses what they want to get and the end user can take it or leave it, they cant pick and choose.

Plaid Pros:

- instantly verify bank account instead of waiting 1-2 days for Micro Deposits to hit account then come back to the app to verify. This is just better flow for the user, who often wants the loan asap. It is better for company too, because there is more conversion.

- balance checks, transaction history - these are useful for us to not overdraw accounts when pulling a payment, and verify income. Budgeting apps use these to auto import values of course.

- many banks have been forced to move to OAuth because of plaid. Having worked at a Top 10 US bank, I do not believe that any other than maybe Capital One would have OAuth today if it were not for Plaid pushing them

- There is really no other feasible option to get this data (other than competitors with same exact strategy so no difference). This is the customer's data that is valuable to them! They should be able to share it with trusted partners if it gives them value.

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#92

Post by breadwinner »

admn2 wrote: post #83

is Plaid inherently bad? Is having an automated way of pulling in real time data worth the security risk of authing into all your bank accounts? Genuinely asking as this seems great in theory, but I'm a bit confused what it looks like to manually keep it updated.

If you call Fidelity with a security issue the first question they ask you is, did you share your password with anyone (and if you did, you're to blame).

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#93

Post by cvoss »

a-fadil wrote: post #75
diggan wrote: post #5

First question from reading through the landing page is about this part: > Import your statements from your broker or bank. Exactly what brokers/banks that are supported should be listed somewhere and linked here, as that's a "make or break" feature for a lot of people I bet. Not much point in replacing my homegrown "Banks CSV export -> Data processing > Import into spreadsheet" workflow unless I just replace that la…

For now only a standard csv file is supported with these columns: Date, Symbol, Quantity, Activity Type, Unit Price, Currency, and Fee. Supported activity types: BUY SELL DIVIDEND INTEREST DEPOSIT WITHDRAWAL TRANSFER_IN TRANSFER_OUT CONVERSION_IN CONVERSION_OUT FEE TAX Example CSV format: date,symbol,quantity,activityType,unitPrice,currency,fee 2024-01-01T15:02:36.329Z,MSFT,1,DIVIDEND,57.5,USD,0 2023-12-15T15:02:36.3…

Seems like this arrangement of columns can't properly support dividends, as 1) there is no change to the held quantity when a dividend is issued, 2) the unit price of the symbol is irrelevant, and 3) there is no column to record the actual amount received. My bank records a quantity of 0 and a dummy unit price of $1. It would be incorrect for the bank to record a non-zero quantity.

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#95

Post by rs999gti »

> No monetization is planned for now (only a "buy me a coffee" if you use and appreciate the app).

A few ideas:

Anonymize and aggregate the data, then sell it off to financial and marketing firms.

Add ads to the site.

Charge a subscription fee.

Partner with banks as a white label financial planning tool.

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#96

Post by Glyptodon »

Besides the ability to easily connect with arbitrary bank and brokerage accounts to maintain data, another thing somewhat lacking in this (general) area is a relatively comprehensive open source market data dataset. You can somewhat pull for individual stocks, but if you want to do analysis or back test a strategy against real data, comprehensive data on even just the S&P 500 is lacking.

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#97

Post by Onavo »

diggan wrote: post #5

First question from reading through the landing page is about this part: > Import your statements from your broker or bank. Exactly what brokers/banks that are supported should be listed somewhere and linked here, as that's a "make or break" feature for a lot of people I bet. Not much point in replacing my homegrown "Banks CSV export -> Data processing > Import into spreadsheet" workflow unless I just replace that la…

I have found https://teller.io to be really good for this. They are more affordable than Plaid too at the lower end of scale.

I have also seen some apps use https://www.simplefin.org/

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#98

Post by Ninjinka »

I tried importing activity from a Charles Schwab account, and it did not work, since they capitalize their field titles. Then after fixing that I got "CSV deserialize error: record 1 (line: 2, byte: 81): field 4: cannot parse float from empty string" and gave up.

Not sure what accounts this is meant to work for.

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#99

Post by rufus_foreman »

j-a-a-p wrote: post #86

I always wondered what staring at the historic values of your portfolio will actually help to improve performance. If you can define some sort of investment strategy, then the tool can make you follow it perhaps.

I have similar information in a spreadsheet (that I am also turning into an app), and what it can help with long term is to put downturns in the market in perspective and keep you from overreacting to them.

When you look at a log chart of your net worth over several decades, things like the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession look like blips. It makes it easier to look at a bear market and think, "this too shall pass".

Of course it also helps you see your progress towards a goal and give you information on how long it will likely take to get there.

Re: Show HN: Wealthfolio: Private, open-source investment tracker

#100

Post by [deleted] »

rs999gti wrote: post #95

> No monetization is planned for now (only a "buy me a coffee" if you use and appreciate the app). A few ideas: Anonymize and aggregate the data, then sell it off to financial and marketing firms. Add ads to the site. Charge a subscription fee. Partner with banks as a white label financial planning tool.

[deleted]
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