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Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

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Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#111

Post by mikeryan »

multicast wrote: post #70
darau1 wrote: post #45

Anybody care to define "wealth management" as opposed to run-of-the-mill personal accounting? Why would I use this instead of ledger[1], for example? - [1]: https://ledger-cli.org/doc/ledger3.html

"Real" wealth management has a lot more legal work behind it since a non trivial portion of wealth management are topics like inheritance and planing for the next generation. Also wealth management is more focused on wealth preservation than generating high returns, that is more the focus of asset management (e.g. hedge funds, private equity etc.). But since this piece of software is focused on the individual the ter…

Also wealth management is more focused on wealth preservation than generating high returns, that is more the focus of asset management (e.g. hedge funds, private equity etc.).

This is a bit simplistic. It’s more focused on setting a target return and cash flows consistent with your current life plans. Whether this is a defensive or more aggressive position is really up to you and your goals. But Wealth managers are about putting an investment strategy in place to achieve that. They also help actively manage your portfolio to address macroeconomic trends.

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#112

Post by darau1 »

berkes wrote: post #67
tr3ntg wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're using a tool like ledger, I don't think there's much ghostfolio could say to convert you. Seems like comparing apples to oranges. I'm not familiar with ledger, but at a glance, seems like it's made for a different audience with different needs.

In fact, I'm working on something alike Ghostfolio but that uses ledger as database. It's very much early stage and mostly proof of concept and hacked together scripts. But I'm moving it to both "tabula" and "bullboard": https://github.com/berkes/bullboard-rs https://github.com/berkes/tabula Again: early. But tabula is my consolidation of random "beancount/ledger" stuff regarding running my small business and startup…

That's interesting. So, if I understand this thread at all, your projects may help me to "preserve" my "wealth", with ledger?

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#113

Post by skippyboxedhero »

Galanwe wrote: post #97
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in wealth management (and am now building something similar to the OP but from a totally different direction), it is a complete scam. The original comment says that no-one is using apps...what do you think wealth managers use? Wealth managers are usually the same products that are re-skinned for professional use with a few added features that most advisors should know how to do themselves...but usually don't (…

> At medium levels of wealth (more than $1m and under $50m), you are likely unable to access good advice What the actual f... According to the "Global Wealth Databook 2021" by Credit Suisse, page 129, there are in the US: - $1-5M : 19.5M people ( - $5-10M : 3.2M people ( - $10-50M : 1.5M people (0.4%) And that is from one of the richest country in the world, with a very steep exponential wealth distribution. $1-50M i…

It isn't. Maybe Morgan Stanley do $1m liquid, but they are aimed at the general public. The big investment banks usually start somewhere around $5-10m, and to actually get good advice you need to be somewhere above this level.

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#114

Post by skippyboxedhero »

ebiester wrote: post #52
skippyboxedhero wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worked in wealth management (and am now building something similar to the OP but from a totally different direction), it is a complete scam. The original comment says that no-one is using apps...what do you think wealth managers use? Wealth managers are usually the same products that are re-skinned for professional use with a few added features that most advisors should know how to do themselves...but usually don't (…

So, then, who are the right people for the kind of financial questions that require experience but don't need an ongoing relationship? (For example, someone who has an existing IRA but would like to convert it as to later take advantage of backdoor Roth conversions - it's a complex modeling exercise that's probably simple for an expert but hard to get right for someone who will need to do it precisely once in their l…

That is the problem. Everyone wants single-time advice but it isn't possible to actually distribute that product profitably in the current structure of the market.

Regulatory costs are very high, this means insurance costs are high, etc. Marketing costs are extremely high in financial services too. If you are going mass market, you are paying hundreds of dollars for leads...how do you make that work if you can't charge much and need to acquire your whole customer base every week?

This is why most of the market is underserved, why rich people end up owning all the high-yield assets, and why the only real solution is having very large institutional pools of capital for most retail savings (i.e. like Australia's superannuation funds, which produced a level of wealth for the average consumer vastly in excess of the US with lower levels of GDP per capita, relatively poor penetration of financial markets, etc.).

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#116

Post by xp84 »

jollyjerry wrote: post #34
matthewtse wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes same! I've always wanted some "simpler" net worth tracker, still on a spreadsheet at this point. I never liked the big heavy ones with all the bells/whistle integrations that want your password so they can log directly into your financial accounts. And the integration would always break, causing my net worth to swing by double digit percentage points. I ended up spending more time nursing the integration than act…

I expanded my spreadsheet into a webapp https://jch.app . My original thinking was to avoid broken bank syncing, but one problem I still have is how to include assets that aren't publicly listed. For example, have funds in a retirement account that's specific to that institution and can't fetch updated prices. Currently getting around that by using a similar target date fund as a proxy for the price.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what’s the pricing on that? When I see “sign up for free” I’m trained to expect a hidden, costly upsell.

If it’s actually free it may actually be helpful to add a prominent Pricing in the nav, where you explain why it’s free, how you make money (or how you might plan to), and whether there are any catches, like selling all the data to someone (not that you’d likely do that, but if I stumbled upon the site from anywhere else, I might assume a catch exists)

Anyway what I can see of this looks really professional, so nice job! I’m curious to try it!

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#117

Post by lannisterstark »

berkes wrote: post #66
olejorgenb wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can ledger track performance over time (which I assume Ghostfolio can). Does ledger (or the eco-system around) come with integration towards sources which categorize assets, and can it easily give a breakdown of the exposure according to such categorizations (per industry, per region, etc.)?

Yes, no. Yes, Ledger can do all those things. No, it doesn't do this "out of the box". I do most of these things. Simple, by adding meta-tags to my ledger. I'm just now working on consolidating on all my willy-nilly scripts and tools. And then plan to turn this into an actual "investment dashboard" ala ghostfolio but using the ledger as source. In the end, a plain-text-ledger is just a of database. And the ledger que…

I mean, "It's possible to do this via x amount of work" vs "Here, you can use this OSS/selfhosted version which will do it for you." Do you legitimately not see the appeal of the latter to many people?

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#118

Post by mushufasa »

mritchie712 wrote: post #77
systemvoltage wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Schwab can track other accounts from Fidelity, Vanguard, etc. I’m probably a minority but I don’t micromanage my wealth. General account level information is good enough. I also do not trust wealth managers, usually their advice is terrible. Schwab automatically assigns a person on your account after a certain wealth threshold. They call me occasionally to make sure I’m aware of the risks which of course I am.

Their advice isn't necessarily terrible, it's just strongly biased towards them making a buck off you.

It used to be standard for advisors to make money on commission, which led to terrible incentives (read: they are paid to get you into particular investments, which is an incentive to recommend things that make them money even if they are bad for you). This practice is declining, but you still find it at the big banks and brokers. "Fee only" advisors means they only take a fee from you, so they don't have this conflict of interest -- you can find many at Napfa.org .

Even then, though, advisors are biased to recommend things that they can actually do for you, so sometimes they will recommend things that are easier for them ("just use the same portfolio as my other clients") instead of finding what's truly optimal for you.

And that's actually usually okay. The kind of person who never touches their investments and doesn't understand finance is actually better off with an advisor than doing literally nothing -- e.g. sitting in cash, or really dumb investments your aunt recommended -- which is the practically the counterfactual a lot of the time

Re: Ghostfolio: Open-source wealth management software

#120

Post by optymizer »

wintermutestwin wrote: post #99
LoveMortuus wrote: post #93

Why did the site hijack the back button? I tried to return to HN but it just kept reloading into the ghostfol.io site...

I am always baffled by people who actually use the back and forward buttons. I guess I just assume that everyone opens links by right-clicking and opening in a new tab. Is there some reason why back and forward is a better or even useful option?

You cannot possibly be serious. Who uses back buttons, on the web? Everybody.
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