Ask any retail investor: "since you started, how much have you made, in euros?" Most don't know. They know their app shows +12% somewhere, that the portfolio is up "overall", that this line is green. But the simple number that sums it all up, how much money went in and what it is worth today, almost nobody has it.
That is not an accident. It is a number few tools have any interest in showing you.
Why you don't know your real performance
Four reasons, and they stack:
Deposits blend into performance. Your portfolio went from €10,000 to €15,000 this year? If you deposited €4,000 along the way, your real gain is €1,000, not €5,000. The valuation curves most apps show cheerfully mix the two.
A portfolio that went from 10,000 to 15,000 over the year, with 4,000 paid in along the way. The value line rises by 5,000; the gain is 1,000. Separating those two bars is the entire point of tracking properly.
Fees vanish from the picture. Brokerage fees, spreads, FX conversion costs, entry fees: they are charged at purchase and then forgotten. Displayed performance starts from the execution price, never from what actually left your pocket.
Closed positions evaporate. You sold that losing line two years ago? It no longer shows up anywhere. The displayed portfolio only contains the survivors, which mechanically flatters the picture.
Accounts are scattered. A PEA here, a life-insurance contract there, a brokerage account abroad. Each shows its own performance, computed its own way, over its own period. Nobody does the sum.
The only sane starting point: the amount invested, per position
Everything starts from a piece of data only you have: how much you actually paid in, fees included, and when. Not the broker's theoretical average price, not the market price on the day you bought: what left your bank account.
Once that amount is set for each position, your unrealized gain becomes a subtraction: today's value minus the amount invested. It is simple, sometimes brutal, always honest. A line showing +8% since January but worth less than what you put into it is still a losing line, whatever the app's green colour says.
The real test: opportunity cost
Knowing you made €2,000 still doesn't tell you whether it was a good trade. Made compared to what? You need two reference points, and they say more together than apart.
The Livret A, the floor. That is what the same money would have earned with zero risk, zero decisions, without ever opening an app. If after three years of active trading you are behind the Livret A, the verdict is final: all that energy destroyed value compared to doing nothing.
The MSCI World, the barometer. That is what the same money would be worth in a plain world ETF, invested on the same dates. Not some fantasy of perfect market timing: the same amounts, the same days, in the index. If your stock picking durably underperforms that passive scenario, the useful conclusion is not "I'm bad at this", it is "I can earn more by doing less".
The three traps of the comparison
First, the index has no fees. Your invested amount includes your entry costs, the index calculation doesn't. A gap of a few tenths of a percent right after a purchase doesn't measure your skill: it measures your broker.
Second, approximate dates distort everything. Comparing a March purchase with an index bought in January makes no sense. The comparison is only honest if every contribution carries its real date.
Third, the short term is noise. Over a few weeks, being ahead of or behind the index means nothing. It is over years that the comparison becomes information.
Where IgniFI comes in
IgniFI does exactly this computation, without cheating. You enter the amount invested and the purchase date for each position, and the dashboard shows your real gain or loss in euros, then compares it with what the same sums, invested on the same dates, would be worth today in the MSCI World (using the index's real returns) or on a Livret A (at each period's official rate).
The result is sometimes flattering, sometimes humbling. Either way, it is the only version of the facts that lets you decide what to do next.