Portfolio Management

How to Record Stock Splits & Broker Transfers

Corporate actions are where most portfolio trackers quietly break. A stock splits, a company you own gets acquired, or you move your holdings from one broker to another — and suddenly your position count, cost basis, or return numbers look wrong. Automatic-sync tools sometimes handle these silently, but if you track by transaction (as any accurate tracker should), you need to record them correctly by hand. Here's exactly how, for each case.

The golden rule: a corporate action changes how many shares you hold and at what per-share price — but it should never change your total cost basis or create a fake gain or loss. If your total cost moves after recording one of these, something's off.

Forward stock split

In a forward split (e.g. 4-for-1), you get more shares at a proportionally lower price. Multiply your quantity by the ratio, divide your cost per share by the same ratio.

Example — 4-for-1 split: you held 10 shares bought at $200 ($2,000 total). After the split you hold 40 shares at an adjusted cost of $50 each. Total cost basis: still $2,000. To record it, edit the original buy transaction's quantity to 40 and its price to $50 — or if you prefer to preserve the original record, add an adjusting note and update the held quantity.

Reverse stock split

The opposite (e.g. 1-for-10): fewer shares at a proportionally higher price. Divide your quantity by the ratio, multiply your cost per share by it.

Example — 1-for-10 reverse split: 100 shares bought at $2 ($200 total) become 10 shares at $20 each. Total cost basis: still $200.

Merger or ticker change

When a company you own is acquired, or simply changes its ticker, record a sell of the old ticker and a buy of the new one on the same date, at the same value — so no artificial gain or loss appears from the changeover itself.

Example: you hold 50 shares of OLDCO, acquired by NEWCO. On the effective date, record a sell of 50 OLDCO at the conversion value, and a buy of the equivalent NEWCO shares at that same total value. Your real gain or loss stays tied to your original OLDCO cost, not to the merger event.

Spinoff

When a company spins off a division as a new stock, you end up holding two positions where you had one. The company publishes an allocation percentage — use it to split your original cost basis between the parent and the spinoff.

Example: you hold PARENT with a $1,000 cost basis. It spins off SPIN, and the company says allocate 85% to PARENT, 15% to SPIN. Adjust PARENT's cost basis to $850, and add a new SPIN position with a $150 cost basis for the shares you received.

Transfer between brokers

This is the one people most often get wrong — they delete the old position and re-add it at the current price, which destroys their real cost basis and holding period. Don't. A transfer isn't a sale.

Instead, keep the original buy transactions exactly as they are — same dates, same prices — and only change the broker label to the new broker. Your cost basis, your holding period, and your return all stay correct, because economically nothing was bought or sold; the shares just moved custodians.

Example: you bought 10 shares of VOO at $400 in 2023 at Broker A, and transfer them to Broker B in 2026. Don't sell and rebuy. Just change that transaction's broker field from "Broker A" to "Broker B". Everything else stays untouched.

How this looks in a CSV. If you're importing via CSV rather than editing in-app, the same logic applies: a split is an edit to the Qty and Price columns of the original row; a transfer is an edit to the Broker column only; a merger is a matched sell row plus a buy row on the same date. There's no dedicated "split" or "transfer" row type — you express these as ordinary transaction edits, which keeps the math transparent.

Zyvo lets you edit any transaction's quantity, price, or broker directly, and add positions manually — so every one of these adjustments is a quick edit, not a workaround. Try it in the live demo →