The new Trading System Viewer adds yet another impressive tool to the Vectorvest system. The ability to compare Trading System performance over your timeframe of choice is useful but limited in what it is actually telling you.
Why is that?
The answer lies in the inability to reflect the fact that some stocks include dividends while others do not. The real gain or loss on any position is the sum of the “change in stock value” plus the sum of any “dividends received” during the timeframe in question.
To be truly meaningful, Trading system performance should be evaluated with dividends included otherwise by comparing returns provided by non-dividend bearing stocks against dividend bearing stocks without the dividend included we are looking at “apples and oranges”.
Vectorvest collects ex-Div and Div-pay dates along with Div and DY data for every stock in their data bases. Theoretically it should therefore be possible to add a dividend payment to a portfolio whenever a stock is held as of the market close immediately prior to the ex-Div date.
Other subscription services (e.g. www.borntosell.com) provide this feature automatically with email notifications prior to the ex-Div date.)
Vectorvest PORTFOLIO Tab
DIVIDENDS: The Portfolio tab includes a “Manage Portfolio” drop down menu from which one can manually add a “Dividend payment”, which is then included as a dated line item in the Transaction Log attributable to the particular stock – but is NOT reported in the Portfolio Summary Report. Why is this?
What happens to the dividend transaction inside the Portfolio tab?
Is the dividend payment simply added to the available cash in the portfolio?
Why is the dividend not reflected as an additional gain for that position?
What is the intended purpose of providing this ability to manually enter dividend payments?
OPTIONS: The buying and selling of options is also a Vectorvest promoted component of both Prudent and Conservative Retirement Income strategies. The Portfolio tab likewise includes a “Manage Portfolio” menu selection via which one can manually add the net proceeds from the sale of a Call or Put into the Transaction Log – again this is NOT reported in the Portfolio Summary Report.
Like a dividend, the sale of a covered call is an additional income source related to the holding of a particular stock and as such should be credited to the total gain (or loss) attributable to that position.
Again, the questions arise: What is the intended purpose of providing the ability to manually enter option premiums in the Portfolio transaction log and how are they handled internally?

Think the current "extensive" company dividend page is unusable. All it is, is a huge list. Maybe put he ex-dividend date on each stock chart. Sure would make things a lot easyer.