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Key Concepts: Portfolio, Holding & Trade

Understand the key concepts in Navexa: portfolios as tax entities, holdings as assets, and trades as transactions.

Tom Wilson avatar
Written by Tom Wilson
Updated this week

When you use Navexa, three terms come up again and again: portfolio, holding, and trade. Here’s what each means and how they work together.

Portfolio = Tax Entity

A portfolio in Navexa represents a complete set of investments under one tax entity.

  • You might create a portfolio for yourself as an individual.

  • You could also create a portfolio for a Self-Managed Super Fund (SMSF), trust, or company.

  • Each portfolio has its own performance, tax reporting and settings.

Think of a portfolio as the “container” that groups everything together for that entity.

Holding = Asset

A holding is any single asset you’ve invested in inside a portfolio.

  • Shares, ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds), managed funds, crypto, property, or custom investments.

  • Each holding is tracked separately for performance, income, and tax outcomes.

A portfolio can contain many holdings, but each holding belongs to only one portfolio.

Trade = Transaction

Trades are the individual buy, sell, dividend, or other transactions that affect a holding.

  • A buy trade increases the quantity of that holding.

  • A sell trade reduces it.

  • Dividends and other events also count as trades.

Multiple trades make up the history of a holding, and all the holdings together make up the portfolio.


How They Fit Together

Portfolio (Tax Entity)

Holding (Asset)

Trades (Transactions)

SMSF Portfolio

CBA (Commonwealth Bank)

Buy, Dividend, Sell

BHP (BHP Group)

Buy, Buy

VAS (Vanguard ETF)

Buy

Cash Account

Deposit, Interest

Personal Portfolio

AAPL (Apple Inc.)

Buy, Dividend

TSLA (Tesla Inc.)

Buy, Sell

Bitcoin (BTC)

Buy

Investment Property

Purchase, Rental Income


In short:

  • Portfolio = the tax entity’s overall investment account.

  • Holding = each individual asset tracked.

  • Trade = every transaction that changes a holding.

This structure enables Navexa to crunch the numbers for performance and tax reporting accurately.

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