The Portfolio Value chart is the most-asked-about thing on the Analytics page: a single line that tries to answer "how is my stack doing over time?"
The way it's built is straightforward once you see it — every buy bumps the line up on the day it happened, every sale steps it down, and live spot prices smooth the line between events.
This article unpacks the mechanics, explains the difference between unrealized and realized gains, and points you to where each one lives in the app.
Analytics is a Pro and Premium feature — see The Analytics page at a glance for the tier-access note and the full page tour.
What the chart shows
The Portfolio Value chart plots the total melt / market value of your current stack at every point in time across the selected window. At any specific historical date, the line is calculated the same way as the headline figure on your Dashboard: every inventory item you held on that date, valued against the spot price for its metal on that date.
That means three things happen to the line over time:
Step up on a buy. Recording a purchase adds new inventory items to your stack. The line jumps upward on the purchase date by the value of those items at the spot price prevailing that day.
Step down on a sale. If you record a sale, the items leave your held inventory. The line steps down on the sale date by the value of those items at that day's spot.
Smooth movement between events. Between buys and sales, the inventory is fixed but spot moves. The line drifts up when spot rises and down when spot falls, in proportion to how much weight of each metal you're holding.
So a line that climbs steadily over a long window without obvious steps is mostly the story of spot prices moving in your favour. A line with visible vertical jumps is the story of your buying activity. Most real-world portfolios show both, mixed.
Unrealized vs. realized gains
The chart and the rest of the Analytics page focus on unrealized gains and losses. Worth knowing the distinction, because they answer different questions and live in different places in the app.
Unrealized (the analytics page focus)
An unrealized gain or loss is the difference between what you paid for an item and what it's currently worth, while you still hold it. It's "unrealized" in the sense that no money has actually changed hands — the gain is on paper, the loss is on paper, and either can swing the other direction tomorrow.
Every chart and breakdown on the Analytics page works from your held items only. The headline Unrealized Gain / Loss card at the top, the Portfolio Value line, the Cost vs Current Value bars, the Holdings by Form table, By Size — all of them.
The relevant math is the Standard melt formula: each held item is valued at weight × current spot, summed across your portfolio. The unrealized G/L is then current value − cost basis, where cost basis is what you actually paid (including any premium over spot and allocated shipping).
Realized (where it lives)
A realized gain or loss is the difference between what you paid for an item and what you received when you sold it. Once a sale is recorded, the gain or loss is locked in — it doesn't move with spot anymore, because the disposal is done.
Realized gains and losses don't appear on the Analytics page in dollar form, because the page is built to describe what you currently hold. They live in two other places:
The Annual Report under Reports (Premium only). Pick a tax year and the report autofills every sale with cost basis, sale proceeds, and the realized gain or loss for each disposal.
The Sold tab on the Holdings page. Each sold item shows its Realized G/L in dollars and percent, frozen at the moment of sale. See The Holdings page: grouped, item, and card views.
The reason for the split: unrealized is a "right now" question and benefits from being charted alongside the rest of your current stack. Realized is a "this happened" question that's most useful when grouped by year and item, which is what the Annual Report is built for.
A worked example
Suppose you bought a single 1 oz gold coin on Jan 15 2025 when spot was $4,200, and you've held it since. As of today, spot is around $4,700. A few months later — say Jul 1 2025 — you bought a second 1 oz coin when spot was $4,400.
On the Portfolio Value chart:
Before Jan 15 2025, the line is at $0 (you held nothing).
On Jan 15 2025, the line jumps up to about $4,200.
Between Jan 15 and Jul 1, the line drifts smoothly between roughly $4,200 and roughly $4,400 as spot moves.
On Jul 1 2025, the line jumps up by roughly $4,400 (the value of the second coin at that day's spot), so total = roughly $8,800.
From Jul 1 through today, the line drifts upward as spot rises to ~$4,700, so today it's around $9,400.
Unrealized gain right now = current value ($9,400) − cost basis ($4,200 + $4,400 = $8,600) = +$800. That's the figure you'll see on the Unrealized Gain / Loss card.
(If you sold one of those coins along the way, the chart would step down on the sale date, and the realized gain or loss from that sale would show up in your Annual Report rather than on this page.)
The time-range tabs
Six tabs in the top-right of the chart switch the window without changing anything else on the page:
1D, 1W, 1M: Short windows. Useful mostly for tracking recent spot moves against a fixed inventory. If you haven't bought or sold recently, these views show only the spot-driven smooth movement.
3M, 1Y: Medium windows. The sweet spot for most stackers — long enough to see meaningful spot trends, short enough that buying activity is visible as discrete steps.
All: The entire history of your account. Shows the full shape of how you've built the position, with every buy step and every sale step over the lifetime of your records.
The chart re-scales the y-axis to fit the selected window, so the visual amplitude of moves changes between views. A 5% swing in spot looks dramatic on a 1D chart and gentle on the All view — same underlying numbers, different framing.
How the all-time percentage is computed
The + / − % all-time figure under the Unrealized Gain / Loss card is the percentage change between your total cost basis and your current value, computed across your entire holding history. The formula is simply:
(current value − total cost basis) ÷ total cost basis × 100
It doesn't matter how long you've held the items or how many you've bought along the way — the figure compares the dollars you've put in against the dollars your held stack is worth right now.
Because it uses cost basis (not the value-at-purchase from the chart), it isolates the gain that's specifically attributable to spot moves and any premium recovery, separate from the act of buying more.
A few practical consequences:
Adding more inventory doesn't change the percentage much in either direction, since both the numerator and denominator grow together when you buy at a reasonable premium.
A buy at unusually high premium will drag the percentage down until spot or premium recovery brings the held items closer to break-even.
The percentage moves continuously as spot moves, even on days when you don't buy or sell.
Where to go next
The Analytics page at a glance: The full page tour, including the panels this article doesn't deep-dive.
Allocation by metal: The donut and what allocation shifts mean.
The Holdings page: grouped, item, and card views: The Sold tab and per-item realized G/L.
Recorded spot vs live spot: Why spot at purchase is locked in and current value always uses live spot.