How to Read Your Wealthsimple Portfolio Report: A Complete Guide for XEQT Investors

The first time I looked at my Wealthsimple portfolio report, I panicked because it showed a different return than what I calculated manually. I had been buying XEQT every two weeks for about eight months, and according to my napkin math – total market value minus total contributions, divided by total contributions – I was up around 7%. But Wealthsimple was telling me my personal rate of return was 4.2%.

Then, just to make things worse, I googled “XEQT annual return” and found a third number that did not match either of the first two. Three different return numbers, all supposedly describing the same portfolio, and none of them agreed.

Nothing was wrong. The numbers were all correct – they were just measuring different things. And once I learned how to read the report properly, that background anxiety disappeared completely. I stopped second-guessing the platform and started focusing on what actually matters: consistent contributions and time in the market.

This guide is everything I wish someone had told me before I spiralled into a Sunday afternoon of financial confusion. Whether you have been investing in XEQT for a week or three years, knowing how to read your Wealthsimple portfolio report will make you a calmer, more confident investor.

1. The Dashboard Overview: What You See When You Open Wealthsimple

When you first open the Wealthsimple app or log in on desktop, you land on your dashboard. For most XEQT investors, this screen contains three key numbers that set the tone for your entire experience:

Total value – This is the current market value of your entire account (or all accounts combined if you are looking at the top-level overview). It updates throughout the trading day during market hours and freezes at the closing price after 4:00 PM ET.

All-time return – This is your personal rate of return since you opened the account or started investing. It is displayed both as a dollar amount (e.g., +$2,340) and as a percentage (e.g., +8.3%). More on what this number actually means shortly.

Daily change – This shows how much your portfolio moved since the previous trading day’s close. On a green day, this feels great. On a red day, it can feel like the world is ending – even if the change is $14 on a $30,000 portfolio.

Here is something I want you to understand right away: the daily change number is the least important number on your screen. It is noise. XEQT holds over 9,000 stocks across 49 countries. On any given day, some are up and some are down. The daily wiggle tells you almost nothing about whether your long-term strategy is working.

I used to check this number multiple times a day. Now I check it maybe once a month when I log in to make a contribution. That shift alone did wonders for my peace of mind.

2. Time-Weighted vs Money-Weighted Returns: The Key to Everything

This is the single most important concept in this entire guide, and it is the one that causes the most confusion. If you have ever wondered why your XEQT returns don’t match the internet, this is the answer.

Wealthsimple reports your money-weighted return (MWR), also called your personal rate of return. Financial websites and fund fact sheets report the time-weighted return (TWR). They measure fundamentally different things.

Time-weighted return (TWR)

This answers the question: “How did the investment perform?”

It measures the performance of the fund itself, stripping out the effect of when you added or withdrew money. It pretends you invested a single lump sum on day one and never touched it. This is what you see on BlackRock’s website, Morningstar, Google Finance, or any year-end “Best ETFs” article.

Money-weighted return (MWR)

This answers the question: “How did my money perform?”

It factors in the timing and size of every single contribution and withdrawal you made. If you added a big chunk of money right before a dip, your MWR will be lower than the TWR. If you happened to add money right before a rally, your MWR will be higher.

Why they are almost always different

Unless you made a single lump-sum investment on January 1st and never touched the account, your MWR and TWR will differ. For anyone doing dollar-cost averaging – which is most of us buying XEQT regularly – the two numbers will diverge, sometimes significantly.

A concrete example

Let’s say you invest $5,000 in XEQT on January 1st when the price is $30 per unit. You get roughly 167 units. By July 1st, XEQT has risen to $33 (a 10% gain). You add another $5,000 and get about 152 units. Then by December 31st, XEQT drops to $31.50.

In this example, the fund returned 5% over the year. But your money only returned about 1.3% because half of it was invested at a higher price and then experienced a decline. Neither number is wrong. They are just answering different questions.

The takeaway: when your Wealthsimple MWR looks lower than what you read online, it usually means you added money at relatively higher prices. When it looks higher, you were adding money at relatively lower prices. Both are normal outcomes of dollar-cost averaging, and neither means you are doing anything wrong.

3. Your Holdings Breakdown: What Each Field Means

When you tap on a specific account (TFSA, RRSP, or non-registered) and scroll down, you will see your holdings. For a single-ETF investor, this is blissfully simple – just XEQT. Here is what each field means:

• Units (or Shares): The total number of XEQT units you own. Goes up with every purchase and every DRIP reinvestment.

• Average cost (or Book cost per unit): The average price you paid per unit across all purchases. If you bought 100 units at $28 and 100 more at $32, your average cost is $30. Adjusts with every purchase and reinvested dividend.

• Market value: Units multiplied by the current market price – what your XEQT is worth right now.

• Book value (or Total cost): The total amount you have invested in XEQT, including reinvested distributions. Think of it as your “money in.”

• Gain/Loss: Market value minus book value, shown in dollars and as a percentage. This is your unrealized gain or loss – you have not actually made or lost money until you sell. For a long-term investor, this number will fluctuate constantly, and that is fine.

4. Understanding the “All-Time Return” Number (And Why It Might Look Wrong)

The “all-time return” displayed prominently on your dashboard is your money-weighted return since account inception. And it is the number that causes the most anxiety for new investors.

Here are the most common reasons it looks “wrong”:

You started investing recently. If you opened your account three months ago, your all-time return reflects just those three months. XEQT might be up 12% on the year, but if you bought in during the last quarter, you only captured a fraction of that move.

You made a large contribution recently. A big deposit dilutes your return percentage even if the market is rising. Imagine you have $10,000 invested with a 10% gain ($1,000 profit). You add $20,000. Your return percentage drops to about 3.3% even though your dollar gain is unchanged. The percentage shrinks because the denominator changed.

Distributions are confusing the picture. When XEQT pays a distribution, the unit price drops by the distribution amount on the ex-date. DRIP compensates with more units, or the cash appears in your account. Either way, your total value stays the same – but the price drop can look alarming for a day.

You are comparing to the wrong benchmark. Your all-time return is personal to you. Comparing it to “XEQT’s return” is comparing apples to a slightly different variety of apples.

5. The Activity and Transaction History: Your Financial Paper Trail

Scroll down further in your account and you will find the activity feed. This is a chronological record of every single thing that has happened in your account. For XEQT investors, you will typically see four types of entries:

Contributions: Money moving from your bank account into your Wealthsimple account. This is cash arriving but not yet invested.

Purchases (Buy orders): The actual purchase of XEQT units. You will see the date, number of units, price per unit, and total cost. If you use recurring deposits with auto-invest, these happen automatically.

Distributions (Dividends): XEQT pays distributions quarterly – typically in March, June, September, and December. You can find the exact schedule in our XEQT distribution schedule guide. Each distribution entry shows the amount per unit and the total paid to you.

DRIP purchases: If you have DRIP enabled, you will see additional buy orders shortly after each distribution. These are your reinvested dividends being used to purchase additional XEQT units. The amounts are usually small (a few dollars to a few hundred, depending on your position size), but they compound meaningfully over time.

This activity feed is your best friend at tax time. It contains everything you need to verify your cost base, track your distributions, and confirm your contribution room usage. I recommend scrolling through it at least once a year to make sure everything looks as expected.

6. How Dividends Show Up in Your Report

XEQT distributions can be confusing because they affect multiple parts of your report at once. Here is the sequence:

1. On the ex-date: The unit price drops by roughly the distribution amount. If XEQT is at $32.00 and the distribution is $0.15 per unit, the price opens around $31.85. This is not a loss – it is the fund releasing cash that was baked into the price.

2. On the payment date (a few days later): The cash appears in your account. If DRIP is on, Wealthsimple uses it to buy more units automatically.

3. In your returns: Wealthsimple’s return calculation factors in dividends, so your overall return should be roughly unchanged on the ex-date despite the price drop.

Distributions are not “bonus money.” They are a return of a portion of XEQT’s underlying earnings. Your total value stays approximately the same on the ex-date. Over time, though, reinvested distributions contribute meaningfully to your total return through compounding.

7. Book Value vs Market Value: What Is the Difference?

These two numbers are simple on the surface but frequently misunderstood.

Book value is your adjusted cost base (ACB) – the total amount you have put into buying XEQT, including reinvested distributions. Market value is what your XEQT is worth today – units multiplied by the current market price.

A few important nuances:

• Book value is not the same as total contributions. If you contributed $10,000 to your TFSA and $9,500 of it was used to buy XEQT (with $500 sitting as cash for the next auto-invest), your book value for XEQT is $9,500, not $10,000.

• Reinvested distributions increase book value. When DRIP buys you more XEQT units using your dividend cash, those purchases add to your book value. This is important for non-registered accounts at tax time, because your ACB determines how much capital gains tax you owe when you eventually sell.

• Book value matters most for non-registered accounts. In a TFSA, capital gains are tax-free, so your book value is mostly informational. In a non-registered account, it is essential for calculating your tax bill. For more on this, check out our Wealthsimple tax slips guide.

8. Account-Level vs Position-Level Returns

You might notice two different return numbers in your account: one for your XEQT position specifically, and one for the account overall. If you only hold XEQT, they should be very close, but they can differ slightly.

Position-level return is a straightforward “what did I pay vs what is it worth” calculation on XEQT itself.

Account-level return is money-weighted and covers the entire account, including any uninvested cash. If you have cash sitting idle – between a deposit landing and your next auto-invest purchase, for example – that cash earns zero return and drags down the account-level number slightly.

If these two numbers diverge significantly, it usually means you have uninvested cash in the account or you recently made a large contribution that has not yet been deployed into XEQT.

9. Why Your Returns Do Not Match XEQT’s Official Returns

This comes up so often that we wrote an entire article about it, but here is the short version.

When you see “XEQT returned 11% in 2025,” that is the fund’s time-weighted return assuming a lump-sum investment with no additions. Your Wealthsimple number is money-weighted, reflecting your unique contribution pattern. The main culprits behind the gap:

• Dollar-cost averaging means you buy at different prices throughout the year, pulling your average cost away from the January 1st starting price.
• Contribution timing – adding money right before a dip hurts your MWR; adding during a downturn can actually push it above the TWR.
• Cash drag from the few days between your deposit landing and your XEQT purchase.
• DRIP reinvestment lag – a small gap between the ex-date and when distributions are reinvested.

None of these represent a failure on your part. They are the natural consequence of being a real human investing real money over time.

10. The Annual Tax Documents Section

Once a year (typically between February and April), Wealthsimple generates tax documents that appear in your account under a “Tax documents” or “Documents” section. Here is what to expect:

T3 (Statement of Trust Income Allocations and Designations): This is the big one for XEQT holders. XEQT is structured as a trust, so its distributions are reported on a T3 slip. The T3 breaks down the distribution into different income types – Canadian dividends, foreign income, capital gains, and return of capital. Each type is taxed differently.

T5 (Statement of Investment Income): You may receive a T5 if you earned interest on uninvested cash in your account. Most XEQT-only investors will see very small amounts here, if anything.

RRSP contribution receipts: If you contributed to your RRSP, Wealthsimple issues a receipt you can use to claim your tax deduction. These usually arrive in two batches – one for contributions from March through December of the previous year, and another for January-February contributions (which can be applied to either tax year).

TFSA contribution summary: While TFSA contributions are not tax-deductible, Wealthsimple reports your contributions to the CRA. You can check this against your CRA My Account to make sure your contribution room is tracking correctly.

The key thing to know: tax documents only matter for non-registered accounts when it comes to investment income. Your TFSA and RRSP shield you from annual taxation on distributions and capital gains (though you still need your RRSP receipt for your tax return). If you receive a T3 from a TFSA, it is informational only – that income is tax-free. For a deeper dive, see our Wealthsimple tax slips guide.

11. Common Misunderstandings That Cause Unnecessary Panic

Having been through the confusion myself and having talked to dozens of other XEQT investors, here are the most common moments of panic – and why none of them are actually a problem.

“I just bought XEQT and it immediately shows a loss”

This is almost certainly the bid-ask spread. You buy at the ask price, but your position is immediately valued at the bid price or midpoint – a difference of a few cents per unit. It is the cost of doing business in any market and disappears within a day or two. XEQT is one of the most liquid Canadian ETFs, so its spread is very tight.

“My XEQT dropped on the ex-dividend date”

As discussed above, this is the distribution being paid out. The unit price drops by the distribution amount, and you receive that money as cash (or as new units via DRIP). Your total value is unchanged. This is not a loss.

“My return percentage dropped after I made a big deposit”

This is the denominator effect. When you add a large contribution, your total invested goes up but your unrealized gain stays the same (or grows only by whatever the market does that day). The percentage calculation changes even though your dollar gain did not. It is math, not misfortune.

“Wealthsimple says I earned 6% but XEQT returned 10% this year”

This is the TWR vs MWR difference we covered earlier. If you are dollar-cost averaging, your personal return will almost always differ from the fund’s headline return. That does not mean you are underperforming. You can read more in our detailed breakdown of why your returns don’t match.

“I see ‘return of capital’ on my T3 and think the fund is returning my money back to me”

Return of capital (ROC) in a T3 is a tax classification, not a sign that XEQT is shrinking. XEQT’s ROC amounts are typically very small, and they represent a portion of the distribution that is treated as a return of your original investment for tax purposes. It reduces your ACB, which matters at tax time for non-registered accounts, but it is a routine part of how trusts distribute income.

12. How to Actually Evaluate if Your XEQT Strategy Is Working

After understanding all the numbers on your report, the natural question is: “So how do I know if this is actually working?”

Here is how I evaluate my own XEQT strategy, and I recommend the same approach for anyone who is in this for the long haul.

Focus on what you control

You cannot control what XEQT returns in any given year. You can control:

• Your contribution amount: Are you investing consistently? Is the amount increasing over time as your income grows?
• Your consistency: Have you maintained your schedule through both green and red markets?
• Your costs: Are you paying zero commissions? (With Wealthsimple, yes.) Is your MER low? (XEQT’s MER is 0.20%, one of the lowest available for a globally diversified portfolio.)
• Your behaviour: Have you avoided panic selling? Have you avoided chasing hot tips?

Use your time horizon as the measuring stick

If you are investing for a goal that is 15, 20, or 30 years away, a one-year return – whether it is 3% or 13% – tells you almost nothing about whether your plan is on track. Look at the long-term trend of your total portfolio value. Is it generally going up? Are your contributions growing the base even when markets are flat? Then the plan is working.

Compare to alternatives honestly

If you want to benchmark yourself, ask: “What would my returns have been if I had done something else?” For most people, the realistic alternative is cash in a savings account, a GIC ladder, or a high-fee mutual fund from their bank. Measured against those, XEQT almost certainly looks excellent over any meaningful time period. If you are still getting your bearings, our XEQT for Beginners guide covers the fundamentals.

13. Putting It All Together: Your Wealthsimple Report Card Cheat Sheet

Here is a quick reference to help you navigate your report with confidence:

The pattern is clear: almost nothing on your Wealthsimple report should cause panic if you are a long-term XEQT investor. The numbers that matter are your total contributions (growing), your time horizon (long), and your consistency (unshakable).

14. Final Advice: The Report Is a Tool, Not a Scoreboard

I want to leave you with the mindset shift that changed everything for me.

Your Wealthsimple portfolio report is not a scoreboard. It is a tool – a snapshot of where things stand right now, in the context of a strategy designed to play out over decades. The best investors I know barely look at their reports. They log in to contribute, confirm auto-invest is running, and close the app.

Here is my concrete advice:

1. Log in to contribute, not to check. Set up automatic contributions and automatic investing. Let the system run. Check in once a quarter if you want, but do not make it a daily habit.

2. Understand your report, then stop obsessing over it. The knowledge in this guide should make you more confident, not more anxious. Now that you know what each number means, you can acknowledge it and move on.

3. Keep your own simple records. A basic spreadsheet tracking your monthly contributions and your quarter-end portfolio value is more than enough. Over time, watching those two lines grow is deeply satisfying – and far more useful than staring at daily return percentages.

4. Remember the destination. Whether your personal return is 6% or 9% in any given year, the real question is whether your portfolio will be large enough when you need it. For most Canadians investing in XEQT through a TFSA or RRSP for retirement, the answer – given enough time and consistent contributions – is almost certainly yes.

Your portfolio report is not your story. Your story is the discipline of showing up, buying XEQT, and letting compounding do its work over years and decades. The report just keeps track of the details along the way.

And now that you know how to read it, you can get back to living your life while your money quietly does its job.