Type what you hold, one row per holding, with the shares and the price or just what it is worth, and tag each row stocks, bonds, cash or other. This page prints the allocation you already have: every line as a per cent of the whole, the stocks, bonds and cash split those lines add up to, the same split again once idle cash is taken out of the bottom, and how much of the portfolio sits in its largest one, three and five lines. It does not tell you what your allocation should be. That is a judgment about your money and your nerves, and a calculator that hands you a number it made up from your age is not making it for you, it is only hiding it. What this page does is the part that can be checked: it turns the holdings you typed into percentages, prints every line of the arithmetic underneath, and folds two rows carrying the same name into one line, because the same fund sitting in two accounts is one holding, not two. No account, no sign up, no prices fetched: every figure here was typed by you.
What you hold, and which bucket each line belongs to
HoldingSharesPriceor valueBucket
Portfolio value, cash counted in
Largest single line
Stocks
Bonds
Cash
Other
Holdings after folding rows
Share in the top three lines
Share in the top five lines
Concentration index (0 to 1)
Effective number of holdings
How the allocation is worked out
An allocation is one division per line. Each holding is worth something today, those values add up to what the portfolio is worth, and a line's share of the portfolio is its own value divided by that total. There is nothing else in it. A holding worth 4,800.00 in a portfolio worth 12,000.00 is 40.0000% of it, because 4,800.00 divided by 12,000.00 is 0.4.
Value of a line = shares × price a share, or the value you typed
Portfolio value = every line added together
Share of a line = value of that line ÷ portfolio value
As a per cent = that share × 100
Where the shares and the price are both typed, the value is worked out from them rather than read from the value column, because shares times price is a figure you can check against a statement. Where only one of the two is known, or neither, put the value straight into the value column: plenty of holdings are known only by what they are worth, and a page that insisted on a share count would be no use on those.
Here is the portfolio used all the way down this page, and every worked line under the result prints the same arithmetic with your own figures in it:
Every percentage on this page is cut off downwards at four decimals, never rounded up, which is the same rule as the rest of the site. The consequence is worth knowing before you add a column up by hand: four lines cut down individually can come to 99.9999% rather than 100.0000%. The missing fraction of a per cent is not missing money, it is the part that was cut off each line on the way down.
What counts as stocks, bonds and cash here
The tag on each row is the only thing this page knows about what a holding is. A bond fund left on the stocks tag is counted as stocks, a money market fund left on other is counted as other, and the page will not second guess you, because it has no way to. There is no ticker lookup here, no fund database, no classification engine: nothing on this site fetches anything.
That looks like a limitation, and on the split question it is the honest way round. The pages that will tell you your allocation without asking you to tag anything get their classification from somewhere else, and when that somewhere else is wrong about one fund, the whole split is wrong and nothing on the screen says so. Here the split is what you tagged, so a mistake is a visible one: it is on the row, and it is yours to change.
Three of the tags are named after the three buckets every asset allocation article talks about, and the fourth is there because real portfolios hold things that are none of them. A REIT, a commodity fund, a single stock held for a reason, an annuity, a position in something you would not know how to label: tag it other and it is counted in the total, printed on its own line, and left out of the three way split rather than quietly pushed into one of them.
The cash question: the same money on two bottom lines
Cash is the one line where there is a real argument about whether it belongs in the total, and the argument changes every other number on the page. Money sitting in a money market fund is money you own, so leaving it out of the portfolio understates what you have. It is also money that is not in anything, so leaving it in makes every invested line look smaller than it is.
This page does not pick a side, it prints both. The first percentage column counts cash in the bottom line. The second takes the cash out and re-divides every remaining line over what is left. On the portfolio above, taking 1,800.00 of cash out of 12,000.00 leaves 10,200.00, and VTI moves from 40.0000% to 47.0588% without a single share changing hands.
Total with cash out = portfolio value − every line tagged cash
Share of a line with cash out = value of that line ÷ total with cash out
On the example: 10,200.00, and 4,800.00 ÷ 10,200.00 = 47.0588%
Two things follow from doing it this way. The lines tagged cash have no share of the smaller total, because they are the part that was taken out, so the second column is empty on those rows rather than showing a meaningless figure. And every other line necessarily gets bigger: if a portfolio is 15.0000% cash, then taking the cash out multiplies every other percentage by about 1.18. That is not the portfolio changing, it is the same money described against a different bottom line, and the page says which bottom line each column is using in the column heading.
The same fund in two accounts is one line
A portfolio is usually one list in the head and several lists in reality: a taxable account, an IRA, an old 401(k), a spouse's account that is managed together. The same fund turns up in two of them, and if each account is typed as its own row, the allocation you get back is an allocation of accounts, not of holdings: one fund split across two accounts is reported as two smaller positions, and the concentration of the portfolio is understated by exactly that split.
So rows carrying the same name are folded into one line before anything is divided. Two rows both called VTI, one worth 4,000.00 and one worth 2,000.00, come back as one line called VTI worth 6,000.00, and the table marks it as having come from two rows so it is not a surprise. Where the price is the same on both rows the shares are added as well; where the prices differ the share count is left blank, because adding shares bought at different prices into one number would be a figure that means nothing.
What folding rows does not do is pretend the accounts are one account. Money in a traditional IRA and money in a taxable account are not the same money after tax, and a page that added them together and called the result a portfolio would be hiding that. This page does not know which account anything is in, does not ask, and does not model tax: it folds same named rows so the holding is counted once, and leaves everything about where it sits and what it will be taxed at to you.
How much of it sits in the largest lines
Percentages line by line answer what the split is. They do not answer the follow up, which is how uneven it is, and that is a different number with a different shape. Three figures do it, and all three come out of the same column of weights.
The plainest is the share sitting in the largest lines. On the example the top line holds 40.0000%, the top three hold 85.0000%, and the top five hold 100.0000% because there are only four lines. A portfolio of twenty funds where the top three hold 85.0000% and a portfolio of four funds where they hold 85.0000% are not the same portfolio, which is why the number of lines is printed beside them.
The second is a single figure for the whole spread, and it is the one this page is built to print because nothing else on the first page of results for this term does. Take each line's share as a fraction rather than a per cent, square it, and add the squares. A portfolio entirely in one line scores 1. A portfolio split evenly over four lines scores 0.25. Anything real sits in between.
Concentration = (share of line 1)² + (share of line 2)² + ... + (share of the last line)²
On the example: 0.4000² + 0.3000² + 0.1500² + 0.1500² = 0.1600 + 0.0900 + 0.0225 + 0.0225 = 0.2950
The third is that figure read back the other way up. Turn it over and it becomes a count: one divided by the concentration is the number of equally sized holdings that would spread the portfolio just as much as yours does. At 0.2950 that is 3.38, against four lines actually held, and the gap between the two is what the unevenness costs. It is called the effective number of holdings here because that is what it is: four positions that behave like 3.38.
Effective number of holdings = 1 ÷ concentration
On the example: 1 ÷ 0.2950 = 3.38
Alongside those, the page prints the even split, which is 100 divided by the number of lines, and how far the largest line sits above it. That is not a target and the page never treats it as one. It is a reference point that costs nothing and needs no advice attached: on four lines an even split is 25.0000% each, and the largest line at 40.0000% is 15.0000 percentage points above it.
What this page does not decide
It does not tell you what your allocation should be. Search this term and most of what comes back is a quiz: pick a profile, answer three questions about your nerves, and it hands you a mix of stocks, bonds and cash that it worked out from a model, sometimes with a projection of what that mix may be worth in thirty years. This page was written against those, and it deliberately does not do any of that. A split handed back from a questionnaire is a judgment someone else made and did not show you, and a thirty year projection is a forecast dressed as a result. Nothing here is a forecast, and nothing here is a recommendation.
It does not know your accounts, your tax position, your time horizon, or what the money is for, and it does not ask. It does not fetch prices, so the values are the ones you typed, as of whenever you typed them. It does not know what a holding is beyond the tag you gave it. It does not hold a view on whether any split is concentrated, or diversified, or right: it prints the concentration figures and leaves the judgment about them to you.
What it does do is the part that can be checked by hand. Every line under the result is the arithmetic with your own figures in it, in the order it was done, so a wrong input shows up as a wrong input rather than as a mysterious answer.
The same sum in a spreadsheet
Two columns are enough: the name in A and the value in B. With the last value in B20:
Portfolio value = =SUM(B2:B20)
Share of a line = =B2/$B$21
As a per cent = =B2/$B$21*100
Bucket total = =SUMIF(C2:C20,"stocks",B2:B20)
Value with cash out = =SUM(B2:B20)-SUMIF(C2:C20,"cash",B2:B20)
Concentration = =SUMPRODUCT((B2:B20/$B$21)^2)
Effective number of holdings = =1/SUMPRODUCT((B2:B20/$B$21)^2)
A spreadsheet rounds when it displays a number but keeps the full value underneath, while this page cuts every figure down at the point it is shown, so on the same inputs the last decimal can differ by one. Folding same named rows is the one thing a spreadsheet will not do for you in a formula: sort by name and add them by hand, or use a pivot table.
The same money, other questions
Once the split is known, the next question is usually what to do about it, and that belongs to a different page. If you already know the split you want and want the buy and sell list that gets you there, the portfolio rebalance calculator does that from the current values and the target percentages, including how much new cash would have to go in before nothing has to be sold. For what a set of buys at different prices actually cost you per share, the cost basis calculator puts them on one line, and the average down calculator covers buying more lower. If one holding was bought in several lots and you want what selling part of it nets, the stock profit calculator works from the two prices and the costs, and the capital gains tax calculator takes a gain from there to what is owed on it. For a single position before it becomes a holding, the position size calculator sizes it from what you are willing to lose, and the risk reward ratio calculator gives the ratio on the trade with the cost of getting in and out taken off it.
Frequently asked questions
How to calculate portfolio allocation?
Add up what every holding is worth, then divide each holding by that total and multiply by 100. A holding worth 4,800.00 in a portfolio worth 12,000.00 is 4,800.00 divided by 12,000.00, which is 0.4, which is 40.0000%. Do that on every line and the results are the allocation. If you hold the same fund in two accounts, add those two together first: it is one holding, and splitting it across two rows understates how much of the portfolio is in it.
How do you calculate your portfolio allocation percentages?
The same division, done with the figure you actually have for each line. Where you know the shares and the price, the value is the shares times the price: 40 shares at 120.00 is 4,800.00. Where a statement only gives you a value, use the value as it stands. Then every line is divided by the total of all of them. This page does all of it and prints the division for each line under the result, so the percentages can be checked against a statement one row at a time.
Should cash count in my allocation?
Both ways are defensible and they give different answers, so this page prints both rather than choosing. Cash counted in answers what you own: 1,800.00 of money market in a 12,000.00 portfolio is 15.0000% of it. Cash taken out answers what the invested part looks like on its own: over 10,200.00, the 4,800.00 in VTI is 47.0588% instead of 40.0000%. Which of the two to use depends on what the number is for, and a page that silently picked one would be making that decision for you.
How much of my portfolio should be in one holding?
This page will not name a limit, because a limit is a judgment about risk and this page has no view on yours. What it will do is tell you how much is: the largest line is printed at the top of the result with its percentage, and the top three and top five shares sit below it. The concentration figure puts the whole thing in one number between 0 and 1, and the effective number of holdings turns that into a count you can hold against the number of lines you actually have.
What is the 70-20-10 rule for investing?
It is a rule of thumb, which is to say a split somebody chose and other people repeated, not a figure that can be calculated from anything. Two questions like this one sit next to this term in Google's own suggestions, and this page answers neither of them, because adopting a rule would mean printing a number that came from nowhere on this page. What it does instead is print the split you have, by the buckets you tagged, so you can hold it against any rule you like and see the difference yourself.
Do I include my 401(k), my IRA and my taxable account?
Type them all in as rows if you think of them as one portfolio, and the split comes back across all of them. The page knows nothing about accounts: it does not ask which row is in which, and it will not adjust anything for tax. That matters more than it sounds, because a dollar in a traditional IRA and a dollar in a taxable account are not the same dollar once tax is taken into account, and a page that presented them as one would be flattening that. If the accounts are managed to different plans, run them as separate visits and keep the two results apart.
Does a money market fund count as cash, and what about a CD?
Whichever tag you put on the row is what the page counts it as, and the page will not overrule you. A money market fund is cash to most people who hold one; a five year CD is closer to a bond in behaviour but is not a bond. Tag it the way you think of it, and if you genuinely cannot decide, tag it other and it stays in the total and out of the three way split rather than being quietly counted as something it is not.
I need a free simple asset allocation calculator. Is this one?
Yes, and simple here means it does one thing: it turns the holdings you type into the percentages they already are. There is no sign up, no email gate, nothing is stored, nothing is fetched, and there are no prices coming from anywhere, so a figure on this page is a figure you typed. The trade for that simplicity is that it will not suggest a split for you. If what you want is a mix handed back from a few questions about your risk tolerance, that is a different kind of tool and this is not it.
Why is the effective number of holdings lower than the number of lines?
Because the lines are not the same size. The concentration figure squares each share before adding them, and squaring punishes a big line harder than it rewards a small one, so an uneven portfolio scores closer to a portfolio with fewer, equal lines than it does to the number of lines it actually has. Four lines of 40, 30, 15 and 15 score 0.2950, which is what a portfolio of 3.38 equal lines would score. The gap between 4 and 3.38 is the unevenness, measured.
This page is a calculator, not investment or tax advice. It applies no strategy, no risk profile, no projection and no probability: the holdings, the values and the tags are yours, and every percentage and index below is worked out from those alone. Nothing here forecasts a return, recommends an allocation, or knows which account anything is in. There are no live prices and no broker connection. Contact: contact@stockavg.com