https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/cost-basis? This Nerdwallet link offers a good overview to Cost Basis. Cost Basis is important because the taxes you pay when you sell stocks are based on your profits which are calculated on what you originally paid for the stock subtracted from what you sold it for. Yes, I know, holding short and long term makes a difference. My suggestion is to keep track of your Cost Basis and ALWAYS check your numbers against what your advisor and brokerage thinks they are. Who cares what they think? This is very important because your taxable profits are stated in the end of year Tax Documents sent to you by the brokerage. You or your tax person use these numbers when you pay your taxes. If they are not correct, tell your tax person to use the correct ones you provide. Your brokerage may be able to correct them but will require you to prove your claims.

Full Disclosure: I am a tax payer not a tax expert. My goal is to make money by investing in profitable companies I believe in. These are companies which help, not hurt, us. I use advisors to facilitate organization and provide guidance to help me protect and grow my assets while acquiring new ones.

I made a cost basis tracking form using MIcrosoft Word tables. If you are an Excel guru, use what works. The form lets me record my stocks activity and have it in one place and at a glance. Now you might wonder why would I do that if I keep my stocks in one place? If you are never going to change brokerage and enjoy digging through monthly statements then I guess that this does not apply. For me, relying on my advisors was a mistake because each time I moved my accounts the true history of my stock activity was not always transferred correctly.

If interested I’ll send you a copy.

My current brokerage and advisor appears more concerned with “balancing” and “protecting” my portfolio than identifying higher performing stocks to help me make money. If you are or have been an advisor, please tells us, are advisors told to not target higher performing stocks? Have balancing quotas? And let’s get real, the brokerages which service the super wealthy can see the buy/sell trends. Of course I would not expect a big time advisor to reveal that a named customer just brought a gazillion dollars of Oligarchy Enterprises. But you experts out there please tell us… they must see the trends. Yes/No? And those trends could be interpreted to provide guidance to us in the cheaper seats. Yes/No?

While reviewing the history of my long held xyz stock I see I have been convinced by various advisors to sell chunks of it in order to “balance” my portfolio. At no time do I find that this selling made me money. When I look at the xyz sold, I have lost a lot.

So fellow investors: 1. Find my Cost Basis errors. 2. How to work with advisors to get them to break their molds and at least devote some of their expertise toward making money and not just providing a quality parking service. 3. Other.

This is a discussion topic or guest posting submitted by a Stock Gumshoe reader. The content has not been edited or reviewed by Stock Gumshoe, and any opinions expressed are those of the author alone.