Advanced Topics

Deeper portfolio analysis beyond role classification

Once you've classified your holdings by role, these advanced concepts let you analyze your portfolio from additional perspectives. These are optional analytical tools - not required to use the methodology, but helpful for deeper insights.

Lenses: Multi-Dimensional Analysis

While roles are permanent and mutually exclusive, lenses provide additional analytical context. A lens is a way to view your portfolio from different angles without changing what each holding does.

What Are Lenses?

Lenses are non-exclusive characteristics you can use to analyze your portfolio alongside roles. Unlike roles (which are singular and permanent), a holding can be viewed through multiple lenses simultaneously.

Common Lenses

  • Tax Type: Taxable, Tax-deferred, Tax-free (Roth)
  • Income Tax Character: Taxable income vs Muni tax-exempt
  • Geography: US, International (ex-US), Global
  • Sector: Technology, Healthcare, Financials, Energy, etc.
  • Liquidity: How quickly you can access cash from this holding
  • Factor Exposure: Value, Growth, Momentum, Quality, etc.

Key Distinction: Roles vs Lenses

Roles Answer:

"Why do I own this?"

"What job does this do?"

One per holding, permanent

Lenses Answer:

"What characteristics does this have?"

"How is my portfolio composed?"

Multiple per holding, analytical

Example: VTI Through Multiple Lenses

VTI (Vanguard Total Stock Market) has:

  • Role: Core Equity (this is its job)
  • Geography Lens: US
  • Sector Lens: Diversified across all sectors
  • Tax Type Lens: Depends on which account you hold it in

The role doesn't change based on lenses. The lenses give you different ways to analyze what you own.

How Lenses Help

Lenses let you answer questions like:

  • "How much of my portfolio is in tax-deferred accounts?"
  • "What's my US vs International exposure?"
  • "Am I overweight in Technology across all my roles?"
  • "How much of my portfolio generates taxable income?"

These are composition questions, not intent questions. Roles tell you why you own things; lenses tell you what characteristics your portfolio has.

The Portfolio File includes lens-based reporting:

  • Account Type (Tax Type) Lens: Automatically derived from which account holds the asset
  • Geography Lens: You can tag holdings as US, International or Global in the AssetLookup table
  • Income Character Lens: Mark holdings as generating taxable or tax-exempt income

Once tagged, you can pivot and analyze your portfolio by these lenses while maintaining role-based structure.

Roles are required; lenses are for additional insight when you want it through file updates and planning.

The Income Engine: Advanced Income Planning

The Income Engine is an optional planning tool built into the Portfolio File. It's an advanced analysis feature - not part of the core methodology, but helpful for retirement and income planning.

What It Does

The Income Engine answers one specific question: "If I stopped reinvesting distributions today, how much annual income would my portfolio generate?"

This is separate from roles. A holding can be Core Equity (role) and also part of your Income Engine (if it pays dividends you might eventually take as cash).

Why It's Advanced

The Income Engine requires:

  • Yield data for each income-generating holding
  • Intentional designation of which holdings generate income for your plan
  • Understanding the difference between income generation and total return
  • A specific use case (retirement planning, expense coverage modeling)

If you're accumulating and reinvesting everything, you probably don't need this yet. If you're approaching retirement or planning income drawdown, this becomes very useful.

What the Income Engine Includes

The Income Engine tracks assets you intentionally designated for income generation:

  • Bond funds (taxable or muni)
  • Preferred stock funds
  • Dividend-focused ETFs (SCHD, VYM)
  • Individual dividend-paying stocks
  • REIT funds
  • Income-focused CEFs

What It Excludes

Always excluded:

  • Money market funds (Liquidity Reserve, not income planning)
  • Individual bonds held to maturity (Capital Preservation)
  • CDs

Growth assets not intended for income:

  • Broad index equity funds where you reinvest all dividends
  • Growth stocks with minimal/no dividends
  • Funds where dividends are incidental, not the purpose

The Calculation

Annual Income ≈ Market Value × Yield %

In the Portfolio File

The Income Engine is implemented via:

  • YieldLookup table: Store current yield % for each income-generating ticker
  • Income Engine flag: Mark which holdings are included
  • Automatic calculation: File multiplies market value × yield for flagged holdings
  • Summary reports: View total estimated annual income

Important: Income from Capital, Not Asset Depletion

The Income Engine tracks income generated from your capital investments without depleting the underlying assets. This is fundamentally different from strategies that sell principal - those deplete your assets over time. The Income Engine focuses on distributions, dividends and interest that represent returns on your capital, not returns of your capital.

Relationship to Roles

Roles and Income Engine answer different questions:

  • Roles: "Why do I own this?" (strategic purpose)
  • Income Engine: "How much income could this generate?" (tactical planning)

They complement each other. Neither replaces the other.

Future Advanced Ideas

Additional analytical concepts are in development:

Behavior Lens (In Development)

An additional analytical layer that tracks how holdings behave across market conditions. Still being normalized and tested for general use. When complete, it will help answer questions like "How does my portfolio behave in different market environments?"

Addding another attribute to the portfolio for EQ behavior will then allow a summary based on behavior, which could provide a different look at concentration and risk in equity holdings.

Risk Analysis (In Design)

Risk is different for Fixed Income and Equities. Fixed income risk is interest rate impact and actual credit risk of the bond(s). Equity risk can be sector based, location, value or even high or low volatility. Lately, some stocks have been on a meme risk which has little to do with the actual fundamentals of the company. Idea is to an attributes to the portfolio to look at certain risk factors.

Graphical Display of Portfolio (In Design)

Being able to display summary details and other account totals in a graphical manner can make reviews more concise or easier to understand. It can also visually show concentrations easily.

Indentity vs Role Display (In Design)

Using the actual numbers of a portfolio, display how it looks in both methodologies as a reference or eye-opener. The visual mapping of the actual numbers can show what is difficult to articulate in a spreadsheet. View example →

Other Ideas/Topics

  • Risk Decomposition Analysis
  • Tax Efficiency Scoring
  • Rebalancing Workflow
  • Single-position concentration risk

Advanced topics focus on analysis, not classification. Roles remain the foundation; these tools add depth when you need it.

Feedback on advanced features? If you're implementing Lenses, Income Engine or have ideas for additional analysis tools, I'd love to hear from you 📧.

Resources

Useful tools and sites for research, analysis and portfolio management

About These Resources

The Intent Over Identity methodology helps you classify and organize your holdings by role. These external resources help you research individual funds, analyze holdings and track income. None are required to use the methodology, but they can support your decision-making process.

These are third-party sites. Intent Over Identity has no affiliation with any of them.

Fund Research & Analysis

Morningstar

Comprehensive fund data, ratings and analysis. Useful for comparing similar funds, understanding fund holdings and strategy, checking expense ratios and historical performance and reading analyst reports on funds.

How it supports the methodology: Helps you determine if two funds are truly duplicative or serve different purposes. Confirms category and strategy alignment with your intended role.

ETF.com

ETF-specific research and screening tools. Useful for finding ETFs that match a specific role or strategy, comparing overlapping ETFs, understanding ETF structure and tax efficiency and screening by sector, geography or factor exposure.

How it supports the methodology: When you need a new holding for a specific role, this helps you find candidates. When consolidating, it shows you which ETFs are near-identical.

Stock Analysis

Clean, fast interface for stock and ETF data. Useful for quick fundamental data, dividend history and yield information, holdings breakdowns for ETFs and financial statements for individual stocks.

How it supports the methodology: Fast lookup when classifying holdings or checking dividend characteristics for Income Engine inclusion.

Dividend & Income Tracking

Track Your Dividends

Portfolio tracking focused on dividend and income generation. Useful for tracking dividend payments across multiple holdings, visualizing income trends over time, projecting future income and monitoring dividend growth rates.

How it supports the methodology: Perfect companion for the Income Engine overlay. Tracks actual received income vs the methodology's forward-looking income estimate. You can build a portfolio of Income Engine tickers here and export to the YieldLookup table.

Dividend.com

Dividend-focused stock and fund research. Useful for finding dividend-paying stocks and ETFs, checking dividend safety and payout ratios, researching dividend aristocrats and achievers and dividend calendars.

How it supports the methodology: When building out Defensive/Dividend or Core Income roles, this helps identify suitable holdings. Also useful for Income Engine planning.

Individual Stock Analysis

Simply Wall St

Visual company analysis with multi-dimensional scoring. Useful for quick health checks on individual stocks, understanding valuation relative to peers, assessing dividend sustainability, visualizing future growth estimates and comparing similar companies.

How it supports the methodology: When evaluating individual stocks for Thematic/Opportunistic roles, these visual breakdowns help assess whether a stock fits your intended purpose. Dividend charts useful for Income Engine candidates.

Market Analysis & Education

Advisor Perspectives

Market commentary, research and advisor-focused analysis. Useful for macro market trends and economic analysis, asset allocation research and strategies, sector and factor analysis and retirement planning insights.

How it supports the methodology: Broader context for portfolio decisions. Helps inform role allocation targets and strategic adjustments over time.

Investopedia

Financial education and definitions. Useful for learning investment concepts and terminology, understanding different asset types and strategies, tax planning and account type education and step-by-step investing guides.

How it supports the methodology: Reference for understanding underlying concepts (qualified dividends, expense ratios, etc.). Good starting point if terms in the methodology are unfamiliar.

Important Cautions

Research is Not Strategy

These resources provide data and analysis. They don't tell you what your allocation should be or which roles you need. The methodology provides the decision framework; these tools provide supporting information.

Past Performance

All of these sites show historical performance data. Remember: past performance does not predict future results. Use performance data to understand how a fund behaves (volatility, correlation), not to predict what it will do next year.

Not Endorsements

Inclusion here does not imply endorsement. These are tools that may be useful. You may find others that work better for you. The methodology is tool-agnostic.

Free vs Paid Features

Many of these sites have free tiers with limited features and paid subscriptions with more depth. The free versions are typically sufficient for basic classification and research. Evaluate whether paid features justify the cost for your needs.