Help & FAQ

Almost everything on Dividend Vision revolves around a portfolio, so start by loading your holdings on the Portfolios page. There are four ways to do it — pick whichever is easiest:

• Upload a CSV — export your positions from Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, or E*Trade and drop the file on the Upload tab. Parsing happens in your browser. For guests and Free accounts, the import stays in that browser. Plus and Pro accounts upload it to private cloud storage so the portfolio is saved to the account and available across devices. See How do I import a portfolio from my broker?
• Connect a brokerage — link your account through SnapTrade or Plaid for read-only, auto-refreshing holdings (a Plus feature). See How do I connect my brokerage?
• Enter holdings manually — type tickers and share counts straight into the Manual Entry form on the Upload tab. Handy for a quick what-if or a small account.
• Start from a preset — the Build tab lets you begin from a model portfolio, tweak it, and save it as your own.

Once holdings are loaded, your income, value, and cash appear on the Dashboard, and the Analyze, Forecast, and Risks tabs come to life. Prefer a walkthrough? Take the guided tour.

The Portfolios workspace is organized into six tabs that run left to right, from loading holdings to sharing results:

• Upload — add holdings by CSV or manual entry.
• Build — start from a preset model portfolio and shape it into your own.
• Analyze — allocation, yield, and holdings charts (Donut, Pareto, Treemap, and more).
• Forecast — project your future dividend income month by month.
• Risks — concentration, payout sustainability, volatility, and overlap.
• Report — a shareable summary you can export or download.

Each tab has a one-key shortcut (u, b, a, f, r, p) — see the full shortcut list.

The guided tour walks you through the key features of the Portfolio Analyzer, showing you how to upload your portfolio, build custom views, analyze holdings, forecast income, and generate reports.

To start the tour:

• Visit the Portfolio page
• Click the light bulb icon (💡) in the top navigation
• Select Take a Tour from the menu

The tour will automatically guide you through each section with helpful tips and explanations. You can exit the tour at any time by clicking the close button or pressing Escape.

You can also search for "tour" or "onboarding" in the site search, or say "take a tour" if you have voice commands enabled.

A few things make Dividend Vision more useful once your holdings are in:

• Build a watchlist — star funds you’re researching to track their yield and payouts. See How do watchlists work?
• Turn on alerts — get notified about delistings, bargains, and new posts. See What notifications will I receive?
• Model reinvestment (DRIP) — see how compounding changes your projection. See the DRIP reinvestment control.
• Enable Stealth Mode — hide dollar amounts when screen-sharing. See What is Stealth Mode?

Curious what each plan unlocks? Compare Free, Plus, and Pro, or explore the full Pricing page.

No dedicated app yet—but you can add a shortcut icon to your phone’s home screen that opens Dividend Vision directly, just like an app. It works great in any mobile browser on iPhone, iPad, or Android.

On iPhone / iPad (Safari)

1. Open Safari and go to the Dividend Vision website.
2. Tap the Share button (or More → Share, depending on your Safari layout).
3. Scroll down and tap Add to Home Screen.
4. Rename it to “Dividend Vision” if needed, then tap Add.

On Android (Chrome)

1. Open Chrome and go to the Dividend Vision website.
2. Tap the three-dot menu in the top-right corner.
3. Tap Add to Home screen (choose Create shortcut if prompted).
4. Rename it to “Dividend Vision” if needed, then tap Add.

The icon will appear on your home screen for one-tap access—no App Store or Google Play download required.

No. Dividend Vision provides research, analysis tools, and educational commentary — not personalized financial advice. Consult a licensed advisor for guidance tailored to your situation.

We offer a few games on the Fun page to help you learn ETF tickers and fund names:

• ETF Memory Match — flip cards to match tickers with their fund names.
• Ticker Quiz — a timed quiz that tests whether you can connect tickers to their full names and issuers.
• ETF Word Finder — a word search puzzle that hides real ETF tickers in the grid.
• Ouija Board — a playful spirit board that "summons" an income ETF ticker when you ask it a question.

We currently track 9,600 income-focused US-traded assets across multiple categories:

• 5,400 ETFs
• 3,300 Stocks
• 530 Mutual Funds
• 34 BDCs
• 24 MLPs
• 46 REITs
• 100 CEFs
• 33 Preferred Stocks
• 26 Crypto
• 11 Money Market

Coverage is primarily US exchange-listed securities (NYSE, NASDAQ, ARCA, BATS, CBOE), plus 500+ foreign companies that trade on the US OTC markets (OTCQX and OTCQB — tickers usually ending in F). Direct foreign exchange listings such as Canadian (TSX) or London (LSE) are not supported — for foreign issuers, look for the US-listed share or ADR (e.g., RY for Royal Bank, ENB for Enbridge) or the US OTC ticker.

Explore and filter these on the Screener and Tickers pages.

No. Dividend Vision is US-only. We track securities that trade on US exchanges (NYSE, NASDAQ, ARCA, BATS, CBOE) plus foreign companies listed on the US OTC markets (OTCQX and OTCQB), and every price, dividend, and portfolio figure is reported in US dollars (USD).

We do not support direct foreign-exchange listings such as Canadian (TSX), London (LSE), Australian (ASX), or other non-US markets, and we do not handle non-USD currencies or currency conversion — every figure is shown in US dollars, so you never have to convert currencies yourself.

Showing everything in USD removes the bookkeeping of foreign exchange, but it does not remove currency risk from foreign holdings. The US-dollar price of an ADR or US-listed foreign share already bakes in the exchange rate between the dollar and the company's home currency, so if that rate moves, the dollar value of the position — and your return — moves with it. For a purely US-domiciled company, FX is not a direct factor.

If you want exposure to a foreign company, look for its US-listed share or ADR (e.g., RY for Royal Bank of Canada, ENB for Enbridge) or its US OTC ticker (usually ending in F) on the Screener or Tickers pages.

A Schedule K-1 (also written K1 or Schedule K1) is a tax form that partnerships send instead of a standard 1099. It reports your share of the entity's income, deductions, and credits, and often requires extra steps to enter into tax software compared to a 1099.

Who issues them? MLPs, some BDCs, and a handful of ETFs structured as partnerships (commodity pools, certain energy funds, etc.). If you hold an MLP like EPD or ET, expect a K-1 every year.

Why should I care?

• K-1s often arrive after the April filing deadline, so you may need to file an extension.
• Income may be classified as ordinary, capital gain, or return of capital — each taxed differently.
• Holding K-1 issuers inside a tax-advantaged account (IRA, 401k) can trigger UBTI (Unrelated Business Taxable Income), which has its own filing requirements.

On Dividend Vision, assets that issue K-1s are tagged so you can filter them on the Screener. Look for the K-1 tag or filter by MLP fund type.

Distribution schedules vary by issuer. Common cadences are weekly, monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, and annually. The payment frequency for each fund is shown on its Tickers page.

Every investment carries some risk, and Dividend Vision does not recommend individual securities. A historically lower-risk profile tends to come from well-capitalized companies with long track records of stable or growing distributions. Use the Screener to filter by payout ratio, dividend history, and yield to compare options.

Some companies issue multiple classes of stock. These class shares are identified by a letter suffix—for example, Berkshire Hathaway Class B trades as BRK.B, Brown-Forman Class B as BF.B, and HEICO Class A as HEI.A.

The dot notation (BRK.B) follows the NYSE convention. You may also see these written with a hyphen (BRK-B) or slash (BRK/B) on other platforms—they all refer to the same security. Dividend Vision displays the dot format to match the official NYSE style, and the search box understands every spelling, so typing BRK.B, BRK-B, BRK/B, or BRKB all find the same stock.

Preferred shares follow the same idea but use a hyphen with a “P” and the series letter—for example, JPMorgan Series C preferred is JPM-PC and NextEra Series R is NEE-PR. Brokers may write these as JPM.PRC or JPM-C; on Dividend Vision they use the hyphen form.

A watchlist lets you track funds you're interested in without adding them to a portfolio. Sign in and click the star button anywhere you see it — on a fund's Tickers page or in the Watchlist column of the Screener — to add or remove a ticker. Pro subscribers can also just tell Ask DV “Add SCHD to my watchlist.”

View it at Assets → Watchlist. The table shows each fund's distribution frequency and yield by default, with optional columns (issuer, asset type, AUM, expense ratio, inception date), sortable headers, column presets, and a CSV export. A green dot marks tickers you also hold in your active portfolio.

• Your watchlist holds up to 250 tickers and syncs to your account, so it follows you across devices.
• Saved (named) watchlists let you keep multiple lists — up to 5 on Plus and 20 on Pro (see plan comparison).
• If a watchlist ticker is ever delisted, you'll get a notification with a one-click option to remove it.

Not real-time, but close. We provide market data with a 20-minute delay across prices, quotes, and charts during core U.S. trading hours. Our quotes do not provide pre-market or post-market hours.

To see the latest delayed quote for any symbol, type its ticker into the Toolbar Search at the top of any page and open its result — the ticker page shows the most recent 20-minute delayed quote. See How do I look up a ticker’s latest quote? below.

Type the ticker symbol into the Toolbar Search — the search field at the top of every page (for example SCHD, JEPQ, or O). Pick the matching result to jump straight to that symbol’s ticker page.

The ticker page shows the latest 20-minute delayed quote — price and change — alongside the fund’s yield, distributions, holdings, and charts. Quotes update during core U.S. trading hours and do not include pre-market or post-market sessions. See Do you have live market data? for more on our data delay.

Financial data (prices, yields, distributions) is fetched from multiple sources and synced on a regular cadence—typically nightly for core metrics. News and YouTube content updates several times a day.

Market quotes are provided with a 20-minute delay rather than in real time.

Head to the Assets page, select two or more ETFs, and click Compare. You'll get a radar chart and table comparing yield, expense ratio, AUM, distribution frequency, and price.

You can also ask the Ask DV chatbot to compare funds for you in plain English.

A red RENAMED banner means the fund changed its ticker symbol — for example SPLG became SPYM. We keep the old symbol’s page for reference, with its price, distribution, and other data frozen as of the rename date. The banner shows the rename date and links to the new symbol.

Click the linked new ticker in the banner to jump to the continuing fund — the old page does not redirect automatically, so you can always look back at the old symbol’s historical record.

DELISTED means the fund stopped trading on its exchange, and LIQUIDATED means the fund was wound down and closed. In both cases we retain the ticker’s page as a record, showing its final data — last price, last distribution, and key details from when it was still active.

The page is kept for reference only; the fund is no longer tradable.

Renamed and liquidated tickers stay in the Toolbar Search for 2 years after the change, then drop out of search results. The ticker’s page itself stays reachable by direct link even after that — only its appearance in search expires.

If a former ticker has dropped out of search, ask the Ask DV assistant about it — it can tell you the fund’s current or successor symbol so you can find the continuing fund.

A public portfolio is a shareable, read-only version of one of your portfolios. Anyone with the link can see its tickers and percentage allocations, follow it, and "fork" a copy into their own account to analyze. It lives at a friendly URL like dividendvision.com/public-portfolio?slug=your-name.

Your dollar amounts are never shared — only allocations (percentages). Your other portfolios stay completely private; a portfolio is only ever public if you explicitly publish it.

Go to Profile → Portfolios, find the portfolio, and click Make public. Pick a public name (we check it's available and appropriate), optionally add a description and banner image, then Publish. The row will show a ● Public badge with View public portfolio, Copy link, and Share buttons.

To stop sharing, open Public … on that row and choose Unpublish.

Under Profile → Public profile you set your public username, a profile photo (click or drag-and-drop), an About me, and your social links (X, YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit, Website). These appear on every portfolio you publish, and editing them updates all of your public portfolios automatically — no need to re-publish each one.

Open their public portfolio page and click ☆ Follow. Everything you follow shows up on your Following page (/following), with each portfolio's forward yield, holdings count, and follower count. Click ★ Following again to unfollow.

Fork to my portfolios copies that public portfolio's tickers and allocations into a new private portfolio in your own account and opens it in your dashboard, so you can run your own analysis, forecasts, and what-ifs on it. It's your copy — changes you make never affect the original.

Click the curved arrow icons in the portfolio toolbar—Undo points left and Redo points right. Each press reverses or reapplies the most recent change so you can quickly recover from a mis-click.

Prefer the keyboard? Use Ctrl + Z (or ⌘ + Z on macOS) to undo and Ctrl + Shift + Z (or ⌘ + Shift + Z) to redo. We keep a rolling history of your last 25 actions, giving you plenty of room to experiment without losing work.

You can undo and redo portfolio edits like adding or removing holdings, tweaking share counts, adjusting dividend reinvestment preferences, renaming custom views, and rearranging widgets. Data imports and exports stay put—they're designed as deliberate actions.

The Portfolio page supports keyboard shortcuts for faster navigation. These shortcuts work when you're not focused on a text field.

Chart Types (in Analyze tab)

• 1 – Donut chart
• 2 – Radial chart
• 3 – Histogram
• 4 – Pareto chart
• 5 – Bubble chart
• 6 – Treemap
• 7 – Vortolio treemap

Forecast Navigation (in Forecast tab)

• ← – Pan timeline left
• → – Pan timeline right

Tab Navigation

• u – Add Holdings tab
• b – Build tab
• a – Analyze tab
• f – Forecast tab
• r – Risks tab
• p – Report tab

Press ? anywhere on the site to see all available shortcuts, or press Ctrl + K (or ⌘ + K) to open the DV Search for quick navigation and actions.

Dividend Vision can read CSV exports from Fidelity, Charles Schwab, Vanguard, and E*Trade.

1. Log in to your brokerage and export your positions as a CSV file.
2. Go to the Portfolio Upload page.
3. Drag the CSV onto the upload area or click Browse to select it.
4. We auto-detect the broker format, normalize columns, and filter out cash or money market positions.
5. Review any flagged tickers, then click Analyze to proceed.

Parsing and broker-format detection happen locally in your browser. For guests and Free accounts, the import stays in that browser and is not uploaded. For Plus and Pro accounts, the CSV and derived holdings are uploaded to private cloud storage so the saved portfolio is available across devices. This depends on the account’s effective plan (including a trial or granted plan), not specifically on whether Stripe billed it. For broker-specific export steps, see the broker-specific automatic import options below.

We've built several financial calculators to help you plan and project:

• DRIP Calculator — project compound growth with dividend reinvestment vs. taking the cash.
• Income Calculator — work out the dividend income a portfolio generates, or the capital needed to hit an income goal.
• Investment Calculator — model portfolio growth with regular contributions and expected returns.
• Retirement Calculator — plan withdrawal strategies with inflation, savings rate, and target income.
• Savings Calculator — project savings growth with recurring deposits and compound interest.
• Mortgage Calculator — estimate monthly payments and total interest over the life of a loan.
• Yield on Cost Calculator — see what your holdings yield against your original purchase price.
• Tax Estimator — estimate the tax impact on your dividend income by filing status and bracket.

Find them all on the Calculators page. No login required—your numbers stay in your browser.

You can connect your brokerage account directly from the Portfolio page using the Connect Broker button. This opens SnapTrade Connect or Plaid Link, secure portals where you log in to your broker and authorize read-only access to your holdings.

Supported Brokers

Together, SnapTrade and Plaid support a wide range of brokers including Fidelity, Charles Schwab (incl. legacy TD Ameritrade), Vanguard, E*Trade, Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, and many more. The full list is shown when you open the Connect portal.

What Gets Imported

Once connected, we pull your ticker symbols, share quantities, and current market values. This data is loaded into the portfolio analyzer so you can immediately see your dividend income breakdown, risk assessment, and forecasts.

You can disconnect your brokerage at any time from the same menu.

Share counts are edited in the manual-entry table on the Manual Entry & Upload Holdings page. There are two ways to get there with your holdings already loaded:

• From Holdings, click the Edit (pencil) button at the top right of the holdings panel.
• Or open the Upload tab, answer “What would you like to do?” with Update an existing portfolio, and pick the portfolio from the dropdown.

Either route loads that portfolio’s current holdings into the table, so you can see exactly what you are changing.

Editing the table

• Change a share count — type the new number straight into the Shares cell. The row’s value, weight, and estimated income recalculate as you type.
• Add a holding — search for the ticker in the box above the table.
• Remove a holding — click the × at the end of its row.
• Change everything at once — the Quick fill bar can set the same share count on every row, convert a dollar amount into shares, or equal-weight the whole portfolio.

Prefer percentages to share counts? Switch I want to enter to % allocation, enter your total portfolio value once, and we convert the percentages into shares for you. Cost basis lives under Optional details → Track Cost Basis.

Saving

Nothing is written to your account until you click Save (the button reads Create Portfolio when you are building a new one). Saving replaces that portfolio’s entire holdings list — it does not merge or append. A holding you deleted is deleted, and a share count you changed is overwritten.

Brokerage-connected portfolios

Portfolios connected through SnapTrade or Plaid are deliberately left out of the “Update an existing portfolio” dropdown: they re-sync from your broker automatically, so a hand-edit would be overwritten on the next refresh. If your share counts there look stale, refresh the connection instead. To hand-edit broker-imported numbers anyway, save them into a manual portfolio first and edit that copy.

Portfolios connected to a brokerage through SnapTrade or Plaid can pull fresh holdings on demand from three places — and they also refresh automatically in the background.

1. The Holdings page

The circular-arrow button (↻) at the top right of the holdings panel pulls your latest positions straight from the connected brokerage. The line under the title tells you how current the data already is — for example “Holdings as of today at 6:30am” — and turns amber once it is more than a day old.

2. The portfolio pill (top of any page)

Click the portfolio-name pill in the top navigation bar to open the portfolio switcher. Any portfolio connected to a brokerage shows a small circular-arrow refresh icon (↻) next to its name. Click it, confirm, and we pull your latest holdings straight from the connected brokerage — it takes a few seconds.

3. Your Profile → Portfolios

Open your Profile and go to the Portfolios section (you can also jump there via Manage Portfolios in the pill dropdown). Each connected brokerage portfolio has two buttons:

• Refresh — re-imports your latest holdings, prices, and cash from the brokerage, plus recent transactions. Fast — use this most of the time.
• Rebuild history — re-imports holdings and re-fetches up to 2 years of transaction and dividend history. This deeper sync takes a couple of minutes and is limited to once per hour per portfolio. Your history already updates automatically about once a day, so use this only if something looks missing.

Automatic refresh

You don’t have to refresh manually. Connected portfolios sync in the background at least once a day: Plaid-connected portfolios refresh shortly after the US market close (and whenever your broker reports a change), and SnapTrade-connected portfolios refresh around 6:30am Pacific. The buttons above are for when you want fresh data right now.

Prices update far more often than share counts do, so a trade you placed today may not change your position list until the next sync. Some brokers — Fidelity among them — only publish settled positions, so a very recent trade can take an extra day to appear on their side no matter how often you refresh.

Don’t see a refresh icon or button?

That portfolio was most likely added via CSV upload or manual entry rather than a live brokerage connection, so there is no brokerage to refresh from. Update it by re-uploading a newer CSV or by editing the share counts by hand. If you have connected a brokerage and still don’t see the refresh option, email support@dividendvision.com with your broker name and we’ll take a look.

Dividend Vision shows your average cost as the raw average purchase price — the total you actually paid for a position divided by the shares you hold. Some brokers, including Robinhood, instead show an adjusted cost basis that has been lowered by return-of-capital (ROC) distributions, so the two figures can differ even when the share count and market value line up exactly.

What return of capital does

ROC is the portion of a fund’s payout that hands back part of your original principal rather than paying income. For tax purposes it reduces your cost basis. High-distribution funds — many high-yield ETFs, closed-end funds (CEFs), BDCs, and option-income funds — can return a lot of capital, so over time a broker’s ROC-adjusted average cost drifts below the price you originally paid. That’s why our number can read higher than your broker’s.

Which one is right?

Both are — they answer different questions. Our average cost reflects what you paid; your broker’s ROC-adjusted basis reflects your adjusted tax basis. Because our basis isn’t lowered by ROC, your unrealized gain/loss on Dividend Vision can look a little worse than in your broker’s app. We import the broker’s reported purchase price as-is and do not currently subtract ROC. For tax reporting, always rely on your broker’s adjusted cost basis and your 1099.

Core answer. Fund Total Return shows what the fund did over a selected date range. Your gain/loss depends on your actual purchase price, shares, buys, sells, dividends received, and cost basis. Those are different questions, so the numbers will not match.

Fund Total Return is fund performance, not your personal money-weighted account return.

Gain/Loss and My Position Return use your Cost Basis (total paid) — what you paid for the shares you still hold. Dashboard Unrealized Return is gain/loss ÷ invested and excludes cash received. The cash-inclusive figure lives on Total Returns → My Position Return, and on Holdings under the same name.

The dashed Avg Purchase Cost line on ticker and Total Returns charts is a reference overlay only. It does not change the Fund Total Return line. Our average is the raw purchase price, not a ROC-adjusted tax basis — see Why doesn't my average cost match what my broker shows?

Where to look

• Fund return — ticker chart (e.g. GPTY) Fund Total Return toggle; Compare Fund Total Return column; Total Returns doors Fund Total Return since I bought and Fund Total Return, standard windows.
• My gain/loss — Holdings Gain/Loss; Dashboard Unrealized Return (income excluded); Total Returns → My Position Return (includes Dividends Received).
• Income received — Holdings Dividends Received (turn it on, or use the My Position Return column preset); Dashboard breakdown Dividends Received. Calendar Received is a status (paid / upcoming), not a dollar total.
• Cost basis — Holdings Avg Purchase Cost and Cost Basis (total paid); Manual Entry Track Cost Basis; ticker chart Avg Purchase Cost overlay. Raw purchase price, not ROC-adjusted tax basis.

This usually means the OAuth handshake succeeded but the broker refused to expose your accounts to the aggregator (SnapTrade or Plaid). The most common cause is a per-broker third-party access setting that has to be turned on inside your broker's own portal — not anything wrong with Dividend Vision.

Interactive Brokers (IBKR)

IBKR requires you to explicitly enable third-party access before SnapTrade can list your accounts. Log in to Client Portal → Settings → Account Settings → Third-Party Services and enable access for SnapTrade. Then retry the connection. Plaid generally works for IBKR without this toggle.

Fidelity

Fidelity is the inverse — SnapTrade tends to be the reliable path, while Plaid sometimes can't enumerate accounts. If Plaid returns no holdings, try SnapTrade.

Try the Other Provider

SnapTrade and Plaid cover different brokers with different levels of reliability. If one fails to import your accounts, the other often works. Both Connect buttons are on the Portfolios page.

Still Stuck?

Email support@dividendvision.com with the broker name and which provider you tried — we can check the webhook logs to see exactly where the import stopped.

Yes. SnapTrade and Plaid are regulated financial technology providers that prioritize security at every level. Here’s why you can trust the connection:

Read-Only Access

Dividend Vision requests read-only permissions. We can see your holdings but can never place trades, move money, or modify your account in any way.

You Never Share Your Password with Us

When you connect, you log in directly on your broker’s website (or the SnapTrade / Plaid secure portal). Your brokerage credentials are never sent to or stored by Dividend Vision.

Bank-Level Encryption

All data transmitted between your broker, SnapTrade or Plaid, and Dividend Vision is protected with 256-bit AES encryption in transit and at rest.

Token-Based Authentication

SnapTrade and Plaid use secure OAuth tokens to maintain your connection. These tokens can be revoked at any time—either from Dividend Vision or directly from your broker’s settings.

SOC 2 Compliance

Both SnapTrade and Plaid undergo regular third-party security audits and maintain SOC 2 compliance, the same standard used by banks and major fintech platforms.

If you ever want to remove access, click Disconnect on the Portfolio page or revoke the connection from your broker directly. Your data is removed from our systems upon disconnection.

The following brokers are not currently supported by SnapTrade or Plaid for automatic portfolio import:

• TradeStation
• Webull
• Public
• Ally Invest

You can still use these brokers with Dividend Vision. Export a CSV or spreadsheet from your broker’s website, then drag it into the upload area on the Portfolio page. We auto-detect common broker formats and normalize the data for you. Alternatively, you can enter your holdings manually.

We are actively working to expand broker coverage. If your broker is missing, let us know and we will prioritize adding support.

No one can guarantee future returns. Dividend Vision provides a forecasting tool that lets you model scenarios for your portfolio — including contributions, growth rates, reinvestment assumptions, and event drawdowns — so you can compare possible outcomes against your goals.

Yes — two different ways, and which one you want depends on whether you need them on another device.

1. Automatically, per portfolio

Every control on the Forecast rail saves the moment you change it. There is no Save button. Each portfolio keeps its own set, so switching between two brokerage accounts and back brings each one’s numbers with it, and a portfolio you have not set up yet starts from the assumptions you used last — you only enter them once.

The two people usually ask about live in different panels: Assumed Annual Return and Dividend growth/yr are in Growth, and Income Goal /mo is in Withdrawals — not Growth, which is where most people look for it first.

Four figures deliberately do not travel to a different portfolio, because they describe one specific account: the Value and Dist. Rate overrides (Start panel), the Margin Balance (Margin panel), and Per-ticker growth (Growth panel).

Automatic saving is per browser, so it does not follow you to a different computer or phone. For that, use a preset.

2. Named presets, saved to your account

Open the forecast utility menu — the ⋯ button in the row of forecast tabs above the chart — and look under Saved settings. Save as new preset… stores the whole setup on your DividendVision account rather than in this browser, so Load a saved preset… brings it back on any device you sign in from. Handy for keeping several scenarios side by side (“conservative”, “retire at 60”) as well as for moving between machines. You can keep up to 25.

Starting over

The same utility menu has Reset forecast to DV defaults, which puts every control back to its starting value. It affects only the portfolio you are looking at, and Ctrl+Z undoes it.

If your settings used to disappear

They did, and it was our bug — through 13 August 2026 the Forecast panel reset itself to the defaults on a page reload, a price refresh, or a portfolio switch. It is fixed. The one thing the fix cannot do is recover values that were already overwritten, so if you were affected you will need to enter your assumptions once more; from then on they stay put.

Deleting a whole portfolio happens on the Account → Portfolios page.

1. Open Account → Portfolios.
2. Find the portfolio in the My Portfolios list.
3. Click Delete on that row and confirm.

Deleting a portfolio cannot be undone. If you only want to stop seeing it for now, consider renaming it or removing it from your collections instead.

Brokerage-linked portfolios work a little differently. A portfolio imported through Plaid has no separate Delete button — use Disconnect, which disconnects the brokerage and deletes the portfolio in one step. A SnapTrade portfolio has both: Disconnect keeps it as a read-only snapshot you can Reconnect later, and Delete removes it entirely.

A frozen portfolio (one over your plan's limit) still shows Delete next to Activate — that is how you free up a slot. Fantasy-draft portfolios are read-only and cannot be deleted. Deleting a portfolio also removes it from any collections it belonged to.

This is not the same as removing a single holding (do that on your Holdings page), or deleting your whole account (see How do I delete my account or export my data?).

Use a portfolio collection to combine two or more of your saved portfolios into one aggregate view. Dividend Vision merges the holdings from every portfolio in the collection, so your total value, income, yield, and sector breakdown are calculated across all of them at once — no manual adding up.

1. Make sure you have at least two saved portfolios.
2. Open your Profile and go to the Portfolios tab.
3. In the Collections section, type a name and click Create.
4. On the new collection, use the Connect portfolios dropdown to add the portfolios you want to include.
5. To load it, open the portfolio switcher pill in the top toolbar and pick the collection from the Collections list — the analyzer, forecast, calendar, and other tools now show the aggregated totals.

See What are portfolio collections? for more detail.

A portfolio collection groups two or more of your saved portfolios into a single view. When you load a collection, Dividend Vision merges the holdings from every portfolio in that group so you can analyze them side-by-side.

Collections are useful when you hold accounts at different brokerages or want to compare a taxable account against a retirement account. Instead of switching back and forth, a collection lets you see the combined picture — total yield, income projections, sector breakdown, and more — all at once.

How to create a collection

1. Make sure you have at least two saved portfolios.
2. Open your Profile and go to the Portfolios tab.
3. In the Collections section, type a name and click Create.
4. On the new collection, use the Connect portfolios dropdown to add the portfolios you want to include.
5. To load the collection, open the portfolio switcher pill in the top toolbar and pick it from the Collections list — your merged holdings will appear in the analyzer, forecast, calendar, and other tools.

Each holding row retains a label showing which portfolio it came from, so you can always tell where a position lives.

The Portfolio Overlap tool finds positions you hold in more than one portfolio — for example the same ETF sitting in both your taxable account and your IRA. That kind of duplication can quietly concentrate your risk, because each account looks diversified on its own.

It works on a portfolio collection: load a collection with two or more portfolios, then open Portfolios → Tools → Overlap. You'll see:

• KPI cards — how many portfolios and unique tickers are loaded, and how many positions overlap.
• A similarity heatmap — how alike each pair of portfolios is, measured as shared tickers divided by the total unique tickers between the pair (0–100%).
• A positions table — every overlapping ticker with its combined value, total shares, and the number of portfolios holding it. Click a row to expand a per-portfolio breakdown with value and share charts.

Use the Overlapping only toggle to hide single-portfolio positions, and the Portfolios dropdown to limit the comparison to specific accounts. The tool is free — it just needs a signed-in account with a collection of at least two portfolios.

Yes. Dividend Vision tracks US cash (USD) held in your connected brokerage accounts and displays it as a standalone KPI (Key Performance Indicator) at the top of the Dashboard and Analysis pages.

Why is cash separate from the holdings table?

Cash doesn’t have a yield, distribution schedule, or expense ratio—mixing it into the holdings table would skew your yield calculations, income projections, and asset allocation charts. By pulling it out into its own KPI card, you get a clear read on how much dry powder you have without distorting the metrics that actually matter for dividend analysis.

Where does the cash balance come from?

When you connect a brokerage through SnapTrade or Plaid, we pull the cash balance reported by your broker alongside your holdings. If you upload a CSV, cash rows are detected and extracted automatically. The cash KPI updates whenever your portfolio data refreshes.

When you build or edit a portfolio on the Portfolios page, each holding has a DRIP toggle. Turn it on and DividendVision automatically reinvests that holding’s cash distributions back into more shares, so your share count, cost basis, and value compound over time. DRIP is a Plus / Pro feature and only applies to portfolios saved to your account (the reinvestment runs as a nightly background job).

Reinvestment follows the industry-standard pay-date convention. Every dividend has three dates: the ex-date decides who is entitled to the payment, the record date confirms holders, and the pay date is when the cash actually lands. A real broker’s DRIP buys the new shares on the pay date at that day’s price — and so do we. An ex-date that has already passed but whose cash hasn’t paid yet is held until its pay date rather than reinvested early.

DRIP only reinvests dividends going forward from the moment you turn it on — distributions paid before then are not back-reinvested. Each reinvestment is recorded as a “dividend reinvestment” transaction you can see on the Transactions tab. Note that re-entering a holding’s shares when you edit the portfolio restates that position, which resets its DRIP-grown share count.

You can color-highlight specific tickers on the Portfolio Analyze charts to make them stand out.

Choosing Colors

Pick one of the highlight circles — A, B, or C — under Highlights & Labels.

Click the color dot to change that color if you want. Each slot keeps its own custom color.

Selecting What to Highlight

Use the Search tickers to highlight box to find and select one or more tickers.

Every selected ticker appears as a tag below the search box.

You can use more than one color group (A, B, C) at once.

Chart Interaction

Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on Mac) and click directly on a chart slice or bar to highlight it.

The color used will be whichever A/B/C circle is currently active.

Resetting

Click Reset highlights to clear all highlights and start fresh.

Mouse or Trackpad

Scroll up near any chart area to zoom in and scroll down to zoom out. The chart zooms around your cursor.

On a trackpad or touch screen, use a pinch gesture to zoom. The midpoint of your fingers sets the anchor point.

Keyboard

Click the chart once to focus it, then press + to zoom in or - to zoom out. When zoomed, the arrow keys pan the view.

Panning

After zooming, drag with your mouse or a single finger to move around the chart. Arrow keys also nudge the view when you stay zoomed in.

Reset

Double-click (or double-tap) the chart, or press Esc or R, to snap back to the default view.

By default the Portfolio → Analyze page shows your allocation as a donut (and other chart types). To see the same holdings as a plain table instead, use either of these:

• On Analyze, switch to the Holdings tab. Your positions are listed in a table — ticker, shares, value, distribution rate, monthly and annual income, and weight — instead of the donut shown on the Value tab.
• For the full, sortable view, open Portfolio → Holdings. It lists every position with shares, price, market value, yield, income, cost basis and gain/loss. Click any column header to sort, and use the column menu to choose which columns appear.

Tip: on the Analyze page you can also press 1–7 to flip between chart types (Donut, Radial, Pareto, Treemap and more) without leaving the page.

The Distribution Safety Score™ — Dividend Vision’s own proprietary metric — is a rules-based 0–100 estimate of how safe a fund’s distribution looks going forward, shown on each fund’s Tickers page. It starts at 100 and deducts points for named risk signals — a falling or recently-cut payout, a missed or skipped distribution, price/NAV erosion, high volatility, leverage or concentration, crypto exposure, a short track record, and more — so the score always comes with a plain-language breakdown of what’s pulling it down. A high yield on its own is not penalized.

Scores map to bands: 80+ Safe, 60–79 Generally safe, 40–59 Caution, 20–39 Elevated risk, below 20 High risk, plus Unproven for funds that haven’t yet banked enough payouts to judge. It’s an educational estimate, not investment advice or a guarantee. Money-market funds, non-payers, and inverse/bear trading products aren’t scored.

Full methodology: every factor and its maximum deduction, the track-record gate, the confidence caps, and the 21,000-observation backtest behind the bands are documented in one place — How the Distribution Safety Score works.

Compare what the fund earns (income from its holdings, plus realized gains) against what it pays out. That ratio is its distribution coverage. Above 100% the payout is funded by what the portfolio actually earned; below 100% the shortfall is being funded from capital — the fund is handing back part of your own principal as return of capital (ROC).

ROC is not automatically bad — some structures use it deliberately for tax efficiency. What matters is whether it is destructive: a persistently uncovered payout alongside a declining NAV is the classic signature of a fund distributing more than it earns, and it usually ends in a distribution cut.

On Dividend Vision, the Distribution Safety Score on each fund’s Tickers page folds exactly these signals — payout trend, price/NAV erosion, and an unusually high yield — into one 0–100 reading with a plain-language breakdown of what is pulling it down. A high yield paired with a low score and an eroding NAV is the pattern to look at closely.

Go deeper: Distribution coverage & income sustainability, when return of capital is good (and when it isn’t), and understanding NAV erosion.

Sharpe and Sortino are risk-adjusted return measures—they tell you how much return your portfolio earned for each unit of risk it took. Both are optional KPI cards you can switch on from the Dashboard KPI Customize menu, and for both, higher is better.

What each one measures

• Sharpe ratio divides your portfolio’s excess return (return above the risk-free rate) by its total volatility—how much the value bounced around, both up and down. As a rough guide, above 1.0 is strong.
• Sortino ratio is the same idea but divides only by downside volatility—it ignores upside swings and penalizes only the drops. A portfolio whose gains are choppier than its losses will have a Sortino higher than its Sharpe.

The backtest behind the numbers

Both ratios come from a backtest of your current holdings. We treat today’s positions as a fixed basket—held at their current weights and rebalanced back to those weights each month—then replay it over up to 3 years (36 months) of dividend-adjusted price history. This answers “how would my current basket have behaved?”—not how your real account performed, since it ignores your actual past buys, sells, and holdings.

From that replay we compute one total return for each month (price change plus reinvested distributions), then measure:

• Volatility—the standard deviation of all the monthly returns (their spread, up and down). This is the Sharpe denominator.
• Downside deviation—the same idea built only from months that fell below the risk-free target, averaged across all months. This is the proper “target downside deviation,” not just the standard deviation of the losing months. It is the Sortino denominator.

Using annualized figures, the formulas are:

Sharpe = (annual return − risk-free rate) ÷ annual volatility

Sortino = (annual return − risk-free rate) ÷ annual downside deviation

Monthly numbers are annualized the standard way—returns × 12 and volatility × √12—and the risk-free rate tracks the current short-term US Treasury bill yield (the 13-week T-bill), refreshed daily. If that live figure is briefly unavailable we fall back to a 4.5% proxy.

When the cards show “—”

We deliberately leave a ratio blank rather than show a shaky number when:

• There isn’t enough history. We need at least 12 months of monthly returns, and the holdings with usable history must cover at least 60% of your portfolio’s weight.
• There was no downside. If every month beat the risk-free rate over the window, downside deviation is zero and Sortino has no meaningful value—so we show nothing (the gauge reads “No downside in window”) instead of a divide-by-zero result.

Because the backtest uses your current basket, these ratios shift as you add or trim positions—they reflect the risk profile of what you hold today, replayed against history. The same backtest also powers the Volatility and Max Drawdown dials in the Risk Metrics widget (and the matching optional KPI cards).

One reading tip: a ratio is only as meaningful as the context around it. Both compress the whole window into a single volatility-based number, so read them next to how long the window is (here, up to three years of monthly returns—shorter for a basket of newer funds) and the Max Drawdown dial, which shows the worst peak-to-trough fall over that window. Two baskets can post the same Sharpe yet have very different worst-case drops—and the drawdown is the one you actually have to sit through.

Beta measures how much a fund moves relative to the overall market — the S&P 500 (we use SPY, the S&P 500 ETF, as the benchmark). A beta of 1.0 moves in line with the market, below 1.0 is steadier, and above 1.0 swings more. A negative beta tends to move opposite the market (inverse funds).

Beta on Dividend Vision comes from one of two places:

• Our market-data provider—for most established stocks and ETFs, we use the beta published by our data vendor.
• Calculated in-house—many newer or specialized funds (option-income / covered-call ETFs, single-stock strategy ETFs, and closed-end funds) aren't covered by the vendor. For those we compute beta ourselves from price history: we compare the fund's daily total return (dividends and splits included) against SPY's total return over the trailing year (up to about 252 trading days) and measure how the two move together.

Including distributions makes beta honest — it doesn't lower it. A natural assumption is that a fund's income should “temper” its beta. It doesn't: beta measures only one thing — how much a fund swings with the market. Covered-call and option-income funds often do show a beta well below 1, but that's because their strategy caps the upside, so they move less than the market — not because the income is subtracted. The cushion that distributions provide shows up in your yield and drawdown, not as a discount to beta.

To keep the number trustworthy, we deliberately leave Beta blank in a few cases:

• Not enough history. A fund needs at least 126 trading days (about 6 months) of prices before we publish a calculated beta. Brand-new funds show no beta until they have enough history—and they're left out of your portfolio's overall beta so they don't distort it.
• Weak relationship to the market. If the S&P 500 explains very little of a fund's movement (common for crypto-linked or single-stock funds), a market beta isn't meaningful—so we show nothing rather than a misleading figure.

Cash-like funds are an exception. T-bill, money-market and ultra-short funds (e.g. SGOV) barely move, so even though they have almost no correlation to the market their beta is reliably near zero. We show that near-zero beta and include it in your portfolio beta—so a large cash position correctly pulls your overall beta down instead of being left out.

In short: an existing vendor beta is used when available; otherwise we compute it from the fund's own price history—and when we can't do either reliably, we show nothing rather than a number you can't trust.

Most broad-market ETFs sit near 1.0. Growth and tech funds tilt to roughly 1.1–1.5, and leveraged funds run about with their multiple — a 2× fund lands near 2, a 3× fund near 3. On Dividend Vision a holding is flagged high-beta by the portfolio Beta volatility risk gauge once its beta meets the preset cutoff (β ≥ 1.2 Strict, ≥ 1.3 Moderate, ≥ 1.5 Loose).

A quick way to read the number:

• < 0.8 — defensive, calmer than the market
• 0.8–1.2 — market-like
• 1.2–1.5 — aggressive
• > 1.5 — very aggressive

You'll sometimes see betas of 4, 6, even 10+ quoted elsewhere for small biotech, meme, or crypto-linked names. Those almost always come from short or unstable price histories where beta isn't statistically meaningful — which is exactly why we leave it blank rather than publish a number you can't trust (see How is Beta calculated?).

One thing to watch: a portfolio heavy in single-stock option-income funds (MSTY, NVDY, CONY, TSLY) and crypto-income funds can carry an effective beta well above 2 even without holding any leveraged ETFs. Many of those funds are also the ones where a reliable market beta can't be computed, so your overall portfolio figure can understate how much they actually swing — check volatility alongside beta for the fuller picture.

They’re related but not the same, and that’s exactly why the Risk Metrics widget shows both. The short version:

• Beta = “how much do I move with the market?”
• Volatility = “how bumpy is my ride overall?”

Systematic risk vs. total risk

Beta measures only your systematic risk—the portion of your ups and downs that is correlated with the S&P 500. It is, mathematically, the slice of your movement the market explains. Anything that moves you but isn’t tied to the index—a single-stock surprise, a sector blow-up, an option-income fund’s NAV erosion—is essentially invisible to beta.

Volatility (the standard deviation of your returns) measures your total risk—the full size of your swings, market-driven and fund-specific. It doesn’t reference the market at all.

Why both matter here

Income portfolios often hold high-yield, covered-call, and single-stock option-income ETFs (think YieldMax-style funds). Those are the textbook case where the two numbers diverge: a fund can have a near-zero beta (barely tracks the S&P, so beta says “calm”) while being highly volatile (a wild ride day to day). Beta alone would badly understate that risk.

Coverage differs too. Your portfolio beta is value-weighted across only the holdings that have a meaningful market beta—funds that report none are left out so they don’t distort it. The backtest volatility covers your whole basket, including the holdings beta ignores.

Bottom line: they’re complementary, not redundant. For a dividend / income portfolio, volatility is arguably the more honest single risk number of the two—but beta still tells you how exposed you are when the broad market moves. Both are gauges in the Risk Metrics widget (and optional KPI cards); turn either off from the widget’s gear menu if you only want one. See also How is Beta calculated? and How are Sharpe and Sortino calculated?

Every risk category assigns one of four severity levels based on how concentrated or exposed your portfolio is:

• DANGER — Critical risk. A single position, issuer, or theme dominates your portfolio. Immediate attention recommended.
• YIKES — Warning. Concentration is building and could become a problem. Time to consider rebalancing.
• HEADS UP — Caution. Worth monitoring but not yet alarming.
• CHILL — All clear. Your exposure is well diversified for this category.

These levels apply across all twelve risk categories tracked on the Risks page.

The sensitivity preset controls how easily a risk flag is triggered. You can switch between presets using the sensitivity dropdown next to the heading on the Risks page. The default is Moderate.

Concentration risks (Ticker, Income, Issuer, Underlying, Tag)

These categories flag when a single item’s share of your portfolio exceeds a threshold. Values shown are the percentage at which each severity level triggers.

Category	Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
Ticker concentration	DANGER	9%	15%	25%
	YIKES	5%	9%	15%
	HEADS UP	3%	5%	9%
Income concentration	DANGER	9%	15%	25%
	YIKES	5%	9%	15%
	HEADS UP	3%	5%	9%
Issuer concentration	DANGER	60%	75%	90%
	YIKES	30%	45%	60%
	HEADS UP	10%	20%	35%
Underlying concentration	DANGER	9%	15%	25%
	YIKES	5%	9%	15%
	HEADS UP	3%	5%	9%
Tag concentration	DANGER	67%	80%	90%
	YIKES	33%	50%	67%
	HEADS UP	10%	20%	33%

Crypto volatility

Flags when crypto-linked holdings exceed a share of your portfolio.

Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
DANGER	15%	25%	40%
YIKES	10%	15%	25%
HEADS UP	5%	10%	15%

Beta volatility

Flags the share of your portfolio sitting in high-beta holdings — funds that swing harder than the S&P 500. A holding counts as high-beta when its published beta meets the preset cutoff (≥ 1.2 Strict, ≥ 1.3 Moderate, ≥ 1.5 Loose). Funds with no published beta are excluded. The values below are the share of portfolio value in high-beta funds at which each level triggers.

Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
DANGER	40%	50%	60%
YIKES	20%	30%	40%
HEADS UP	10%	15%	25%

New ETF seasoning (fund age)

Flags funds younger than a certain age. Newer funds have less track-record data.

Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
DANGER	< 6 months	< 3 months	< 1 month
YIKES	< 12 months	< 6 months	< 3 months
HEADS UP	< 24 months	< 12 months	< 6 months

Low AUM (assets under management)

Small funds are more likely to close or have liquidity issues. Because many high-yield strategies are intentionally small, this category is a watch-list signal: it tops out at YIKES and never flags DANGER.

Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
YIKES	< $2M	< $1M	< $500K
HEADS UP	< $50M	< $25M	< $10M

Price decline

Flags holdings that have fallen by more than a threshold over a trailing window. The window itself varies with the preset: 3 months on Strict, 6 months on Moderate, and 1 year on Loose.

Severity	Strict (3 mo)	Moderate (6 mo)	Loose (1 yr)
DANGER	≥ 15%	≥ 20%	≥ 30%
YIKES	≥ 8%	≥ 12%	≥ 18%
HEADS UP	≥ 3%	≥ 6%	≥ 10%

Dividend decline

Flags holdings whose distributions are shrinking year over year.

Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
DANGER	≥ 20%	≥ 30%	≥ 40%
YIKES	≥ 10%	≥ 15%	≥ 25%
HEADS UP	≥ 5%	≥ 8%	≥ 12%

Margin usage

Flags when margin utilization exceeds a percentage of available margin.

Severity	Strict	Moderate	Loose
DANGER	76%	85%	90%
YIKES	51%	65%	76%
HEADS UP	30%	45%	60%

Strict is the most conservative—flags appear earlier so you catch concentration before it grows. Loose gives more room before flagging, suited to investors comfortable with higher concentration. Moderate splits the difference.

These thresholds were calibrated by the development team. If you have feedback on the defaults, please let us know.

On the Tickers and Compare pages you'll see a toggle next to the chart:

Price  |  Fund Total Return

The two toggles are independent — turn either one on, the other on, or both at once. With both active, the chart draws two lines so you can see exactly how much of a fund's performance came from price movement vs. reinvested dividends.

What each line shows

• Price: the split-adjusted closing price over time. Splits are reflected (so a 3-for-1 split doesn't show as a 67% drop), but dividends are not reinvested. This is the line that matches what you'd see on a typical broker quote.
• Fund Total Return: the value of a hypothetical position that buys one share at the start of the visible range, then reinvests every cash distribution (regular dividends, special dividends, capital-gain distributions, return-of-capital) back into the security at the ex-dividend day's closing price, and adjusts for any splits along the way. This is fund performance, not your personal money-weighted account return. It is not your personal gain/loss unless marked My Position Return on Total Returns.

The math

For each bar in the visible window, we plot:

• Price line: the bar's split-adjusted close (the raw close column from our data feed).
• Fund Total Return line: the bar's split + dividend adjusted close. This is the standard back-adjusted close used by every research platform — it back-fills the historical price series so the most recent bar equals the actual close, and earlier bars are deflated by the cumulative dividend yield since each ex-date. Because of this back-adjustment, the two lines start at different values in the past and converge at today's close.

The percent change shown in the legend, header, and tooltip is calculated against the first bar in the visible range, for each line independently:

return % = (last_value − first_value) ÷ first_value × 100

So the gap between Price % and Fund Total Return % is, by definition, the contribution from reinvested cash distributions over the visible window.

Data source

Daily bars come from our end-of-day market-data feed. Each bar carries both the split-adjusted close and the split + dividend adjusted close, so switching modes (or showing both at once) requires no extra network calls. Corporate actions — splits, spin-offs, special dividends — are applied by our data feed as soon as the official record date is published.

Assumptions and caveats

• Frictionless reinvestment. We assume every dividend is reinvested at the ex-date close with no commissions, no bid/ask spread, and fractional shares allowed. Your real-world brokerage DRIP may settle at a slightly different price and may not allow fractional shares.
• Reinvestment timing — ex-date by default, with a pay-date+1 option. The default plots reinvestment at the ex-date closing price, matching the industry-standard convention used by Bloomberg, S&P, MSCI, and every published total-return index. The math is unambiguous and reproducible: on ex-date the share price drops by approximately the dividend amount, and reinvesting at that same close offsets the drop exactly. In real life, though, you cannot actually reinvest a dividend until the cash hits your account on the pay date, which is typically 1–4 weeks after the ex-dividend date. Use the "Pay+1" toggle in the chart header to reinvest at the close of the first trading day strictly after pay date — a more realistic model of a retail DRIP, at the cost of being non-reproducible against published index returns. The practical difference is usually small but can be a few basis points per distribution on volatile or high-yielding names.
• Reinvestment % slider. When Fund Total Return is on, a slider next to the toggle lets you dial reinvestment from 0% to 100%. The un-reinvested portion of each distribution is consumed as income — it leaves the portfolio entirely and does not compound. 100% (the default) matches the standard total-return calculation that our adjusted-close data encodes. 0% turns Fund Total Return into a pure price line. Intermediate values model "I lived off some of the dividends" scenarios: for example, 50% reinvested and 50% taken as income is a partial DRIP where half the cash funds living expenses. The math is an exact share-count simulation, not an approximation: at each distribution, the reinvested fraction of the cash buys new shares at the ex-date close, and those shares earn every later distribution and price move, while the withdrawn fraction leaves the position and never compounds. (Equivalently, each bar's growth is the price return plus the reinvested fraction of that bar's distribution yield — so sliding between 100% and 0% smoothly fans the line from the adjusted-close path down to the raw price path.) While the slider is below 100%, the chart header also reports the cash the scenario withdrew as "$X.XX/share taken as cash".
• Gross of taxes. The line shows pre-tax total return. If you hold the fund in a taxable account, your after-tax return will be lower; the tax impact depends on whether the distribution is a qualified dividend, ordinary income, or return of capital.
• Currency. All figures are shown in USD using each security's US-market close, so there's no currency conversion to do. For an ADR or US-listed foreign share the USD price already reflects the dollar/home-currency exchange rate, so FX can still move the total-return line for those holdings.
• Toggle visibility. On the Tickers page, the Price | Fund Total Return toggle is hidden when the visible window contains no distributions — the two lines would render identically, so showing the toggle would be misleading.
• Compare page normalization. When two or more tickers are selected, every line is normalized to percent change from the start of the visible range so funds at very different price levels (e.g. $30 vs. $500) can be compared head to head. With both Price and Fund Total Return on, you'll see two lines per ticker that share the fund's color, told apart by weight (a thinner Price line and a heavier Fund Total Return line). In colour-blind-safe mode the Fund Total Return line is also dashed.

Why the lines diverge over long ranges

On a high-yield monthly-distributing fund (think JEPQ, QYLD, QQQI, SPYI), the difference between the two lines can be dramatic over 5+ year windows because distributions compound. On a low-yielder (e.g. QQQ, SCHG), the two lines barely separate. That gap is the "dividend story" for the fund — exactly what the Fund Total Return view is designed to surface.

Modeling a drawdown such as a 50% S&P decline over 24 months can follow several different paths to the same endpoint. We evaluated three common approaches.

Bottom line: No single model is definitive. For our forecasts we use Method #2 (compound percentage decline) because it offers a reasonable balance between mathematical consistency and realism without requiring additional tunable parameters.

Trending rankings are fully automated, with no human curation or editorial selection.

Trending ETFs

We scan the titles and descriptions of the latest videos and news updates, count how often each ticker symbol or fund name appears, and rank by total mentions. The top 3 are shown.

Trending Issuers

The same mention-counting approach is applied to issuer names and aliases, with two additional boosts:

• Featured ETF boost — issuers with the current featured ETF receive a score increase.
• New launch boost — issuers that launched new ETFs in the last 30 days receive additional points per new fund.

The top 3 issuers by combined score are shown.

Under the Hood

Rankings refresh every time you load the News page.

Slideshow lets you flip through a list of tickers one at a time, landing on each ticker’s full detail page, so you can review a whole list without clicking back and forth.

Where to start one

• Holdings (your holdings page): the ► Slideshow button at the right of the toolbar, next to the search and grouping controls.
• Watchlist (Assets › Watchlist): the ► Slideshow button in the toolbar, next to Compare and Clear.
• Screener (Assets › Screener): the ► Slideshow button in the filter bar — plays the matching results in their current sorted order.
• Popular (Assets › Popular): the ► Slideshow button by the heading — flips through the most-held tickers.
• Or just press S on any of those pages (when you’re not typing in a box).
• Ask DV: type something like “start my slideshow” or “slideshow my watchlist” and DV will launch it for you.

Sort first — the slideshow follows your order. The tickers play in the exact order the table is currently showing. Click any column header (yield, market value, day change, name, and so on) to sort the list however you prefer before you start, and the slideshow advances in that same order. Filtering or hiding rows applies too — only the rows you can see are included.

Moving between tickers

• ← / →: previous / next ticker.
• The ‹ and › buttons in the banner do the same.
• You can press an arrow at any time — even during auto-advance — to jump ahead or back.

The control banner

A small banner sits just below the toolbar while a slideshow is running:

• Play / Pause (► / ⏸): start or stop auto-advance.
• Speed picker: how long each ticker shows before the next — 3, 5, 10, or 30 seconds.
• Music (🎵): when background tracks are available, pick one to loop quietly while you browse, or leave it Off.
• “3 of 12”: your place in the list, plus its name.
• Drag handle (⠯): grab it (or the “3 of 12” label) to move the banner anywhere on the screen.
• Hide (⤢): tuck the banner away so it’s out of the way — it reappears whenever you move the mouse, then hides again.
• Close (×) or Esc: end the slideshow.

Reaching the end

When you pass the last ticker, a prompt appears with Restart (go back to the first) or Done. The slideshow also ends if you leave the ticker page or open a ticker that isn’t in the list.

Click the round value bubble or press Tab until the slider handle is focused. Once it's selected, you can nudge it precisely without using the mouse.

Try these shortcuts after the slider is focused:

• Arrow Left or Arrow Down: move one step toward the minimum.
• Arrow Right or Arrow Up: move one step toward the maximum.
• Page Down: jump back by 10 steps (a large step).
• Page Up: jump forward by 10 steps.
• Home: snap directly to the minimum value.
• End: snap directly to the maximum value.

Prefer the buttons? Shift + jumps instantly to the minimum, while Shift + jumps to the maximum.

Dividend Vision has three search tools, each suited to a different need:

• Toolbar Search — the search field at the top of every page. Type a ticker, issuer, or keyword to get instant results ranked by relevance.
• DV Search — a command palette for power users. Press Ctrl + K (or ⌘ + K), or double-click the search icon, to navigate pages, open calculators, toggle themes, and more. See How do I use DV Search? below.
• Ask DV (Pro) — an AI chatbot that answers natural-language questions. Click the chat icon in the nav bar to ask things like “Which monthly ETFs yield over 8%?” or “Compare JEPQ and DIVO.”

DV Search is the fastest way to get around Dividend Vision. Press Ctrl + K (or ⌘ + K on macOS) to open it from any page. You can also double-click (or double-tap) the search icon in the toolbar.

Search & Navigate

Start typing to search across every page, calculator, game, and ETF ticker on the site. Use ↑ / ↓ to highlight a result and Enter to go.

Quick Actions

• Toggle Dark / Light Mode — switch themes without opening Settings.
• Keyboard Shortcuts — open the full shortcuts panel.
• Take a Tour — launch the guided Portfolio Analyzer walkthrough.

Recent Commands

Open the palette with an empty search to see your most recent commands. This makes it easy to repeat frequent actions.

Press Escape or click outside the palette to close it.

Voice Mode lets you browse Dividend Vision with your voice. Click the microphone button in the top navigation, allow access, and start speaking commands when the indicator shows that we're listening.

Try commands like:

• "Go to the news page"
• "Open my portfolio"
• "Set chart type to Treemap"

Dividend Vision opens in dark mode by default. To switch themes, click the settings gear (⚙️) in the top navigation and toggle the Dark mode switch — turn it off for the light theme, on for dark. Your choice is saved on this device and applies the next time you visit.

You can also change it from DV Search: press Ctrl + K (or ⌘ + K on macOS) and pick Toggle Dark / Light Mode, without opening the settings menu.

If a page looks out of date — an old layout, a feature you expected is missing, or numbers that don’t match a change you just made — your browser is almost always showing a cached copy. Loading the fresh version takes a few seconds, and you do not need to sign out for any of these.

On your phone (iPhone or Android)

Don’t just tap refresh — fully close the browser (swipe it away in the app switcher) and reopen dividendvision.com. If it still looks old:

• Android (Chrome): open a new Incognito tab, or clear just this site’s data via the ⋮ menu → Settings → Site settings.
• iPhone (Safari): open a Private tab — that sidesteps the cached copy without touching anything else. Only if that doesn’t help, use the Settings app → Safari → Clear History and Website Data; note this clears history for every site and signs you out everywhere, so reach for it last.

On a computer

• Mac: hard refresh with ⌘ (Command) + Shift + R.
• Windows: hard refresh with Ctrl + Shift + R.

Still looks wrong after a hard refresh? The data itself may simply be on its normal update schedule — see How fresh is the data? — or email support@dividendvision.com.

Ask DV is DividendVision’s AI-powered chatbot, available exclusively to Pro subscribers. It can answer questions about dividend ETFs, compare funds, analyze your portfolio, manage your watchlist, and even navigate the site for you—all through a natural-language conversation.

Open it by clicking the chat icon in the top navigation bar. You can type your question or use voice input via the microphone button.

Here are some examples to get you started:

Explore ETFs

• “What are the top monthly dividend ETFs by yield?”
• “Show me ETFs from JPMorgan with yield over 5%”
• “Which ETFs have the lowest expense ratio?”
• “Find weekly-paying dividend ETFs”

Compare Funds

• “Compare JEPQ and DIVO side by side”
• “How does SCHD compare to VYM?”
• “Show me a table comparing JEPI, JEPQ, and DIVO”

Portfolio & Watchlist

• “Show my current portfolio holdings”
• “Analyze my portfolio’s dividend income”
• “What’s on my watchlist?”
• “Add SCHD to my watchlist”

Navigate & Control

• “Go to the news page”
• “Open the portfolio analyzer”
• “Set chart type to treemap”

You can also click the ? button in the chat header at any time to see these sample questions and click one to send it instantly.

Ask DV is rate-limited to 30 messages per hour per user, and each message can be up to 2,000 characters. The chatbot keeps the last 10 messages in its conversation window so it can follow the thread of your discussion.

Ask DV is focused on dividend investing—it won’t answer questions about individual stock picks, crypto, options strategies, or personal tax advice. It also cannot make trades or modify your portfolio; it has read-only access to your data (except for watchlist changes, which require your confirmation).

Yes! Press the Up Arrow key in the chat input to scroll back through your previous messages, and the Down Arrow key to scroll forward again. This works just like a terminal—handy for re-sending or tweaking a question you asked earlier without retyping the whole thing.

You can also type history or command history to see a clickable list of your recent messages. Click any item to reload it into the input field.

After you send a message, a star icon appears on the right side of your message bubble. Click it to save that prompt as a favorite—click it again to remove it. You can save up to 30 favorites.

To browse your saved prompts, click the bookmark button next to the chat input field to open the Prompt Library. It has three sections:

• Your Favorites — prompts you’ve starred, with a delete button to remove any you no longer need.
• Recent — your last few prompts that aren’t already favorited, so you can quickly re-send them.
• Examples — sample questions grouped by category to help you get started.

Click any prompt in the library to send it immediately.

Stealth mode hides sensitive portfolio numbers when you need privacy in public spaces. When enabled, we strip totals from analysis headers and mask any element marked as sensitive so curious onlookers only see a clean layout.

Toggle it from the Settings menu using the Stealth mode switch, or press Alt + S on Windows and Linux (Option + S on macOS) to flip it on and off instantly. Your preference is saved locally, so the site remembers your choice next time you sign in.

Yes. All traffic to Dividend Vision is encrypted in transit with A+ rated SSL/TLS. Brokerage connections are read-only through SnapTrade or Plaid, and your brokerage credentials are never sent to or stored by Dividend Vision — see Is it safe to connect my brokerage? for details.

Dividend Vision has three plans. Current prices and the full feature matrix live on the Pricing page; here's the short version:

• Free ($0) — 1 portfolio via CSV or manual entry, kept in your browser rather than saved to your account, plus basic portfolio analysis and charts, the ETF Screener and comparison tool, all calculators, news headlines, and end-of-day pricing.
• Plus ($6.99/month) — adds brokerage connections (SnapTrade / Plaid), income forecasting, advanced charts (Pareto, radial, treemap), the dividend calendar, the full news feed, Bargains & Baggage alerts, and cloud saving: up to 5 portfolios, 3 collections, 5 saved watchlists, and 5 saved reports.
• Pro ($8.99/month) — everything in Plus with higher limits (20 portfolios, 10 collections, 20 saved watchlists and reports), plus the Ask DV AI chatbot with AI ETF comparison and AI risk analysis, the risk assessment dashboard, and Monte Carlo simulation.

Annual billing saves about 20% on Plus and Pro. New accounts can start with a 7-day Pro trial — no credit card required — and you can switch or cancel anytime. To upgrade, visit the Pricing page or click your avatar and select Subscription.

Yes. Charges from Dividend Vision appear as DVISION on your credit or debit card statement.

If you don’t recognize the amount, click your avatar in the navigation bar and select Subscription to view your current plan details. Still unsure? Email support@dividendvision.com before contacting your card issuer — we’re happy to look into any charge and resolve billing issues directly.

Click your avatar in the navigation bar, select Subscription, then click Cancel subscription at the bottom of the panel. Your access continues until the end of the current billing period.

If you change your mind, you can resubscribe anytime. Your data stays with your free account unless you choose to delete your account entirely.

Click your avatar in the navigation bar, select Subscription, then click Manage Billing. This opens your billing portal where you can update your card, switch between monthly and annual billing, and view past invoices.

Changes take effect immediately—your next charge will use the updated payment method.

When you cancel, your access continues until the end of your current billing period—you keep everything you’ve paid for.

If you need a refund, reach out to support@dividendvision.com and we’ll work with you on a case-by-case basis.

Dividend Vision uses passwordless sign-in via Apple, Google, or email link, so there is no traditional username or password to recover.

To regain access to your account:

1. Click Sign In on the home page.
2. Enter the email address you originally signed up with.
3. Check your inbox for a sign-in link and click it to log in.

If you signed up with Apple or Google, choose the Continue with Apple or Continue with Google option instead.

If you no longer have access to the email address associated with your account, contact support@dividendvision.com and we’ll help you get back in.

Click your avatar — the small profile icon at the far right of the top navigation bar (it shows your photo, or a person outline if you haven’t set one). That opens a dropdown menu with your name, plan, and a few options.

Click Sign Out at the bottom of that menu to end your session. You can sign back in anytime from the Sign In button on the home page — see How do I recover my username or reset my password?

Just want the latest version of a page? You don’t need to sign out — that’s usually a cached copy. See How do I load the latest version of the site (hard refresh)?

To permanently close your account rather than just sign out, see How do I delete my account or export my data?

When you're signed in, the bell icon in the top navigation shows a badge with your unread count. Click it to read notifications, follow ticker links, or Mark all read. Read items move to a history list under Profile → Notifications, where you can also delete them.

What you can be notified about

• Delistings (all plans) — if a ticker in your portfolio or watchlist is delisted, you get an alert with quick actions like Mark as sold or Remove from watchlist.
• Bargains & Baggage alerts (Plus and Pro, opt-in) — when one of your holdings newly enters “bargain” or “baggage” territory based on its trailing returns and pullback.
• New blog posts (all plans, opt-in) — a heads-up when we publish a new article.

Managing them

Toggle each notification type on or off under Profile → Notifications. Alerts are per-type (there's no per-ticker muting yet). Most alerts are generated once a night after our data sync finishes; blog-post alerts go out as soon as an article is published, and the bell checks for new items every few minutes while you browse.

Open your Profile and scroll to the Delete my account section, then click Delete account. A short guided flow walks you through the process:

1. You can optionally export all of your data as a JSON file (portfolios, holdings, watchlists, and settings) before anything is removed.
2. You then choose between canceling your subscription only (your account and data stay intact on the free tier) or deleting your account entirely.

Full deletion permanently removes your account and all associated data and cannot be undone. If you only want to stop paying, canceling the subscription is enough — see How do I cancel my subscription?

There’s also a Clear local data button on the same Profile page that removes everything stored in your current browser (cached holdings, chat history, preferences) without touching your cloud account — useful on a shared computer.

After you click Download Report, your browser should open a save dialog or start a download automatically. If nothing happens, look for a notification that the pop-up was blocked.

Allow pop-ups from dividendvision.com (or add it to your browser's safe list), then click Download Report again to trigger the export. Most browsers show the file in your default downloads folder once the pop-up is allowed.

Most data tables on Dividend Vision can be exported to a CSV file that opens directly in Excel, Google Sheets, or Numbers. Look for an Export CSV button (or a Download CSV option in the table's menu) and the file downloads to your browser's default downloads folder.

You can export from:

• Holdings — on the Portfolio → Holdings page, click the Export CSV button above the table. The export mirrors your on-screen columns, sort order, and live prices.
• Transactions — the Transactions table has its own Export CSV button.
• Income forecast — open the Forecast chart menu and choose Export CSV to save the projected payout schedule.
• Watchlist — on Assets → Watchlist, open the table menu and choose Export CSV.
• Screener — the Screener utility menu includes an Export CSV action for your current results.
• Dividend calendar — use the export menu's Download CSV option to save upcoming payouts.

If clicking the button does nothing, your browser may be blocking the download — allow downloads or pop-ups from dividendvision.com and try again (see report downloads for help with blocked pop-ups).