Which Interactive Brokers report should I export?

An Activity Statement, found under Reports or Statements in Client Portal. Set a custom date range covering the entire life of the account and choose CSV rather than PDF or HTML. The default periods IBKR offers are short ones such as the last month or year to date, and those are the most common cause of an import full of sales with no matching purchases.

Why does my IBKR statement have no buy or sell column?

Because the trade rows do not carry an action word at all. The side of a trade is encoded in the sign of the quantity, so a sale is simply a negative number. The dividend, withholding tax and cash rows in the same file do carry words, so neither rule reads the whole statement on its own and both have to be applied.

Should I use an IBKR Flex Query?

If you expect to export more than once, yes. A Flex Query lets you define exactly which sections and columns a statement contains and re-run that definition later, so the file has the same shape every time. That is not true of the standard activity statement, which changes as IBKR adjusts its sections, and it is worth the setup time.

How should multi-currency IBKR accounts be handled?

Each trade is recorded in the currency it settled in, so a portfolio built from the statement is only coherent once those amounts are converted using the exchange rate on the date of each transaction. Converting everything at today's rate instead makes past trades appear to move in value whenever the exchange rate does, which they did not.

How to export your portfolio from Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers gives you more control over the export than any other broker here, which is an advantage once it is set up and a reason people give up on the first attempt. The report you want is an Activity Statement.

Getting the file

Under Reports or Statements in Client Portal. Choose Activity Statement, set a custom date range covering the entire life of the account, and pick CSV rather than PDF or HTML.

IBKR defaults to short periods — the last month, the last quarter, year to date. Those defaults are the single most common reason an IBKR import comes out with sells that have no matching buys. Set the start date to before you funded the account.

Flex Queries, if you are going to do this more than once

IBKR’s Flex Queries let you define exactly which sections and columns a statement contains, save that definition, and re-run it later. If you expect to re-import periodically, setting one up once is worth the twenty minutes. A saved query also means the file has the same shape every time, which is not true of the standard statement when IBKR adjusts its sections.

The thing that makes IBKR files unusual

An IBKR activity statement is really several reports stacked in one file, and they do not share a convention.

The trade rows carry no action word at all — the side is encoded in the sign of the quantity, so a sale is a negative number and nothing else marks it. But the dividend, withholding-tax and cash rows in the same file do carry words: Dividends, Withholding Tax, Deposits & Withdrawals, Broker Interest Received.

So neither rule alone reads the file. Anything importing it has to take the word where there is one and fall back to the quantity sign where there is not. Read with the sign rule alone, your dividends become trades; read with the word rule alone, every sale becomes a purchase of a negative number.

Multi-currency

IBKR accounts frequently hold several currencies at once, and the statement records each trade in the currency it settled in. A portfolio built from it is only coherent once those are converted at the rate on the date of each transaction rather than today’s rate — otherwise past trades silently move as the exchange rate does.

What to check once it is in

A known position’s share count and average price.
Dividends for a full past year, and whether withholding tax has been double-counted as a separate cost.
Anything held in a non-base currency, against the platform’s own figure.

For why deposits must not be counted as gains, see what your real return is when you keep adding money.

HaboFi reads IBKR activity statements as they download, taking the action word where the file gives one and the quantity sign where it does not. CSV or Excel, no broker login and no API key — a file you downloaded yourself, and nothing that keeps reading your account afterwards.

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This article is general information about how these calculations work. It is not financial, investment or tax advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. See our terms.