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Trade Tagging & Categories

Trades categories allow you to label transactions for separate analysis, without affecting the main Trades sheet calculations (e.g., P&L, ROI, taxes). This is useful for isolating specific strategies or timeframes, such as short-term trading versus long-term holding.

Why Use Categories?​

  • Isolation: Analyze subsets of trades independently. For example, separate day-trading profits from long-term investments.
  • Matching Control: By default, sell transactions match buys based on the full transaction history (e.g., FIFO). On top of that, transactions that share a category are also matched against each other within the category.
  • No Impact on Main Calculations: Categories don't alter overall P&L or taxes in the Trades sheet.

Example:
You buy GOOG shares multiple times at low prices. Later, you enter a short-term trade (buy and sell within a week). Under FIFO, the sell matches an old buy in your main trade history. By assigning a "trading" category to the short-term buy/sell, they also match as one isolated trade you can analyze on its own.

Setting Up Categories​

  1. Add Categories in Configuration: Go to the Configuration sheet, under "Trades Categories," add one line per category (e.g., "Trading", "HODL").
  2. Assign in Transactions: In the Transactions sheet, select a category from the dropdown in the "Category" column. (If the column is hidden, look for the "+" toggle in the header.)
  3. Generate Trades: Run Generate Trades as usual.

Analyzing a Category​

To see how a category is performing, open the Analysis sheet, enable Category Mode, and pick the category. The analysis then covers only the trades matched within that category — Success Rate, P&L, ROI, and FX Impact for that strategy alone.

No tax figures for category trades

Trades matched within a category carry no tax information. Category matching pairs your buys and sells by strategy rather than by the legal FIFO/LIFO order, so tax figures are only meaningful on the main Trades sheet.

Managing Categories​

  • Editing: Change category names in Configuration, update the Transactions rows with the new category, then re-run Generate Trades.
  • Multiple Categories: A transaction can have one category; use different categories for different strategies.

Troubleshooting​

  • Dropdown Not Appearing: Ensure categories are added in Configuration and the column is visible. Also, make sure the Data Validation extends to all transaction rows. Check the range in Data > Data Validation and confirm the "Value contains one from range" validation for the "Category" column.