Track ETF and Stocks in One Unified Portfolio

1. What Is a Mixed Portfolio?

A mixed portfolio is any investment portfolio that combines two or more different types of instruments — typically index ETFs alongside individual stocks, but it can also include bond ETFs, REITs, certificates, money market funds, and cash positions. The core-satellite strategy is the most common structure: a large "core" allocation (often 70-80% of the portfolio) consists of diversified, low-cost index ETFs covering global equity markets; the remaining "satellite" allocation consists of individual stock positions chosen for specific reasons — conviction bets on particular companies, sector overweights, dividend income concentration, or simply opportunistic picks. Tracking this type of portfolio is significantly more complex than a pure ETF portfolio. Each individual stock has its own earnings calendar, dividend schedule, corporate action history, and sector weight. The ETFs contribute hidden exposures — a global equity ETF alone might hold thousands of underlying stocks, giving you indirect exposure to every sector and geography. Without a dedicated mixed portfolio ETF and stocks tracker, it is virtually impossible to understand your true total exposure, avoid unintentional concentrations, or accurately measure performance attribution between your core and satellite positions.

2. The Look-Through Problem: What Your ETFs Really Hold

The most significant analytical challenge unique to mixed portfolios is the "look-through" problem. When you own a broad index ETF like the MSCI World, you indirectly hold thousands of underlying stocks. But when you also directly own Apple, Microsoft, or Tesla as individual satellite positions, you are unknowingly doubling up your exposure to those names — once through the ETF and once through the direct position. Without look-through analysis, your portfolio might appear diversified on the surface while actually being dangerously concentrated in a handful of mega-cap technology stocks. DonkyCapital performs look-through analysis on your ETF holdings, combining the indirect exposures from ETF underlying holdings with your direct stock positions to calculate your true effective exposure at the company, sector, and geographic level. This means you can see that your "diversified" portfolio is actually 48% in US technology — and decide whether that concentration is intentional or needs to be corrected. This capability is critical for investors running a core-satellite strategy and is one of the primary reasons to use a purpose-built tracker capable of consolidating stocks and ETFs in one portfolio view rather than relying on spreadsheets or single-instrument tools.

3. Performance Attribution: Core vs Satellite

One of the key questions every core-satellite investor should be able to answer is: is my satellite stock-picking actually adding value over my core ETF positions, or is it detracting from performance? This is the essence of performance attribution — understanding how much of your total return came from each component of your portfolio. Without rigorous performance attribution, there is a natural tendency toward survivorship bias: investors remember their winning satellite picks fondly and attribute the overall portfolio's strong returns to their stock-picking skill, while forgetting the losers and ignoring that a pure ETF portfolio might have done just as well or better. DonkyCapital separates performance attribution between your ETF positions and your individual stock positions, calculating the TWR (Time-Weighted Return) for each group independently and for the total portfolio. You can see at a glance whether your satellite positions generated positive or negative active return relative to what a benchmark allocation would have delivered. This is the only honest way to evaluate whether the complexity of running a mixed portfolio ETF and individual stocks strategy is paying off in extra return, or simply adding tracking error and transaction costs without compensation.

4. Consolidating Multiple Brokers for a Mixed Portfolio

Most investors who run a mixed portfolio do not hold everything at a single broker. A common structure is: core ETF positions at a low-cost broker (DeGiro or Scalable Capital for European investors), individual stock positions at a different broker with better execution quality or lower stock trading fees, and perhaps a third account for retirement savings or a specific market not easily accessible elsewhere. This multi-broker reality makes tracking exponentially harder without dedicated software. Each broker produces its own transaction statements, uses its own naming conventions for securities, applies its own dividend and corporate action labeling, and exports its own CSV format. Without a consolidation tool, you are left manually merging data from multiple sources in a spreadsheet — a process that is both time-consuming and error-prone, especially when corporate actions like stock splits, dividends, and mergers need to be reconciled. DonkyCapital imports transactions from all major European brokers in their native CSV formats and automatically consolidates positions across brokers. If you own the same ETF at two different brokers, DonkyCapital merges the positions into a single consolidated holding, correctly aggregates your total cost basis, and shows your true total exposure. This is how you consolidate stocks, ETFs, and bonds in one portfolio view without hours of manual data wrangling every month.

5. Dividend Consolidation in a Mixed Portfolio

Dividend income in a mixed portfolio can come from multiple sources simultaneously: individual dividend-paying stocks with their own quarterly or annual schedules, distributing ETFs with their own distribution policies, REITs with monthly or quarterly payments, and bond ETFs with regular coupon distributions. Each source generates income on a different timeline, at a different gross amount, and potentially subject to different withholding tax treatment depending on the country of the issuing company and your broker's handling of foreign dividends. Without a unified dividend tracker, understanding your total monthly passive income from a mixed portfolio requires logging into multiple broker accounts, downloading multiple statements, and manually aggregating the numbers — a process that most investors find tedious enough to skip, which means they never develop a clear picture of their true income run rate. DonkyCapital consolidates all dividend income across all position types and all brokers into a single dividend dashboard. You can see your total annual income broken down by source (individual stock dividends vs ETF distributions), by broker, by asset class, and by month. The dividend calendar shows upcoming expected payments, allowing you to plan reinvestment or cash-out timing. For investors building toward a passive income target, this consolidated view across a complex mixed portfolio is one of DonkyCapital's most practical and time-saving features.

Frequently Asked Questions