A plain-English tour of every screen — from your first launch to the deepest analytics. Search for what you need, or browse by area. Nothing here leaves your machine; this page just explains what you already own.
No section matches that. Try a shorter word — “tax”, “sync”, “bond”.
What to set up first
New here? Do these six things and the app’s net worth, health score and analytics will actually reflect you — not a blank slate. Each step links to the full how-to.
Not sure a number looks right? Almost every figure has a small i beside it in the app that explains it in one line.
Getting started
Installing, unlocking the app for the first time, and finding your feet.
Install & activate First run
Manticore Finance runs on Windows 10 and 11. After you buy, you receive a licence key by email. Run the installer, open the app, and paste the key when asked — activation is a one-time step tied to your purchase.
One licence covers your personal machines.
No account to create anywhere — the key is your login.
Lost your key? It’s in your purchase email. You can re-request it any time — see Common questions.
Your first portfolio Add asset
On first launch the app offers a sample portfolio so you can look around with real-looking numbers. Clear it whenever you like — one button removes every sample row untouched from your own data.
To add your own, use “+ Add asset” (top-right). Search a ticker — a US or European listing, an ETF, or a crypto coin — then enter how many units you hold and, optionally, your cost basis so the app can show profit and loss.
Already have a spreadsheet? Bulk-import a CSV to load a whole portfolio in seconds.
Prices work immediately — no data key, no configuration.
Lock it with a passphrase 🔒 Top bar
Set a passphrase from the lock icon in the top bar. Once set, your data is encrypted at rest and the app asks for the passphrase each time it opens. It’s also what makes cross-computer sync safe.
Important: the passphrase can’t be recovered — there’s no “forgot password” because nothing is stored on a server. Keep it somewhere safe.
Languages & display currency Top bar
Two dropdowns in the top-right switch the language and the display currency for the whole app. Every value is converted on the fly, so a mixed-currency portfolio still adds up to one figure in the currency you picked. Your choices are remembered next launch.
The layout
How the app is organised, so you always know where a number lives.
Tabs, groups & the top bar
The app is arranged into seven groups along the top — Focus, Portfolio, Watchlist, Money, Planning, Insights and Records. Click a group and its screens appear on the row beneath. The top bar holds the global actions that apply everywhere: add an asset, switch language or currency, sync, theme, export a report or a backup, lock, and settings.
Focus is where the app opens — your own hand-picked dashboard.
Portfolio and Money hold your positions and your cash/net-worth.
Planning, Insights and Records hold the forward-looking analytics, scores and your document vault.
In a hurry? Press Ctrl+K anywhere to jump straight to any tab, holding or action. See Global tools.
Privacy & your data
Where your data lives, how to back it up, and how to keep two computers in step.
Nothing phones home
Your holdings, cash, budgets and documents live in one encrypted file on your own machine. The app fetches public market prices and nothing else — it never uploads your financial position anywhere. There’s no cloud account and no server of ours involved.
Back up & restore Top bar
The export/import icons in the top bar save all your data to a single file, or replace it from one. Use it before a big change or to move to a new PC.
Export backup writes everything to a file you choose.
Import backup restores from one — it replaces your current data, so export first if unsure.
Sync across two computers Settings
Point the app at a folder you already sync — Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive or a shared drive — and it keeps a second machine in step. Only the encrypted copy is written there, so your holdings are never readable in that folder, and it requires a passphrase.
If two machines are edited at once, the newest change wins and the older version is kept as a backup — nothing is quietly lost. The sync icon in the top bar shows when you last synced and lets you sync on demand.
Updates Ctrl+K → Check for updates
Check for a newer version from the command palette. The app tells you whether you’re current or an update is available — the download itself is a normal installer, on your terms.
Focus dashboard
Build the page the app opens on Focus
Focus is your own dashboard. Pick the sections you actually use — health, performance, exposure, fees, planning, whatever matters to you — and they become the first screen every launch. There are 24 sections to choose from, in the order you want them.
Add, remove and reorder sections to taste.
Each section links through to its full tab for the detail.
Watchlist & charts
Live prices, refreshing as you watch Watchlist
An auto-refreshing list of the stocks, ETFs and crypto you follow, grouped by type. Prices update roughly every 15 seconds and flash green or red as they tick. One click adds any row straight to your portfolio.
Deep charts Watchlist → any row
Click a holding to open its price chart, from 1 day through all-time. A quick way to see where a position has been before you act on it.
Price alerts Watchlist · Portfolio → Alerts
Set an alert on a holding and get a native desktop notification when it triggers — checked as prices refresh. Alerts go beyond a simple price level; see Rebalance & alerts for the full set.
Financial health
One score for where you actually stand Insights → Health
A single 0–100 health score built from five weighted pillars — savings rate, emergency-fund months, debt, retirement progress and diversification — with a plain-English read that leads with your weakest area.
See exactly what’s pulling the number up or down.
Pillars with no data are marked N/A, never guessed — so fill in more of the app and the score gets truer.
Fear & Greed
A market-sentiment gauge that shows its work Insights → Fear & Greed
A 0–100 sentiment reading where every number reveals the data behind it — S&P 500 momentum, volatility (VIX), safe-haven and junk-bond demand, and 52-week position — computed locally from free market series. Nothing about your portfolio is involved.
Five sourced components, no black box.
History charted over 1Y–Max, so you can see how long the market sat in greed or fear.
Holdings & positions
Under Portfolio → Positions. What you own, what it cost, and the events that change it.
Holdings & P&L Portfolio → Holdings
Enter quantity and cost basis to see live value and unrealized profit/loss grouped by asset class, plus estimated dividend income. Selling records a realized gain or loss that rolls up into an all-time figure.
Realized and unrealized P&L are tracked separately.
Tax-loss candidates (holdings below cost) are flagged for you.
Tax lots Portfolio → Holdings → Lots
Every position and P&L figure is derived from a pure transaction ledger, with a per-lot view of exactly what you bought and when — so the numbers reconcile instead of being stored and hoped for. This is what feeds rebalancing’s “which lot to sell” maths.
Corporate actions Portfolio → Actions
Record splits, spin-offs, returns of capital and mergers as dated events that rewrite your quantity and cost basis correctly — so a 2-for-1 or an acquisition never quietly breaks your P&L or your holding period.
Bonds Portfolio → Bonds
Track individual bonds by hand and see them counted in net worth — but with real fixed-income maths, not just value and coupon: yield to maturity, duration, convexity and a maturity ladder. Enter face value, coupon, maturity and price as a % of par.
See what a 1% rate move actually costs you, and when your money comes back.
Pure arithmetic — no data feed required.
Accounts & tax wrappers Portfolio → Accounts
Record which account each holding sits in — an ISA, a SIPP, a 401(k), pensioensparen — and the Tax tab stops pretending everything is in a plain taxable account. Sheltered holdings drop out of your bill automatically. Fourteen wrapper types across the countries covered.
Returns & performance
Under Portfolio → Returns. How your money has actually done — with the honesty about luck most tools skip.
Performance: the figure you can hold against an index Portfolio → Performance
The time-weighted return of your strategy, with the timing of your deposits stripped out — the number you can fairly compare to an index — alongside money-weighted XIRR and per-holding contribution, all reconstructed from your ledger.
Day-by-day history Portfolio → Performance
Your portfolio rebuilt day by day from your own transactions and each holding’s price history — so the chart starts the day you actually began investing, not the day you installed the app. Split-adjusted, and honest about anything it can’t reconstruct.
Dividends Portfolio → Dividends
A forward calendar built from what your holdings have actually paid — the real rhythm, not a guess — plus trailing income and yield per holding, projected month by month.
Accumulating ETFs are correctly shown as paying nothing, since they reinvest internally rather than distributing.
Backtest Portfolio → Backtest
Run your allocation against real historical prices — lump-sum vs dollar-cost-averaging, CAGR / IRR and drawdown — to see how the same mix would have behaved through past markets.
The luck test Portfolio → Backtest
Your own track record rebuilt a thousand times over, to show how much of it could be chance. If the plausible range of risk-adjusted return still spans zero, it says so — because a good number over a short, noisy stretch is what luck looks like too.
Risk & exposure
Under Portfolio → Risk. Where your risk really sits — and when “diversified” is one bet.
Risk & risk-adjusted return Portfolio → Risk
The full risk-adjusted picture: Sharpe, Sortino, Treynor, Calmar, Value-at-Risk, and a correlation matrix that shows when a “diversified” portfolio is really one bet wearing several tickers.
Exposure & concentration Portfolio → Exposure
Concentration measured with the Herfindahl index and “effective positions,” allocation by class, sector, region and currency, an editable stress test, and a crash replay that runs your holdings through the real 2008, COVID and 2022 drawdowns.
Style / factors Portfolio → Style
See what your portfolio is really tilted toward — the factor exposures (size, value and the like) behind your holdings, so a wall of tickers resolves into a handful of bets you can actually reason about.
Currency exposure (FX) Portfolio → Currency
Your portfolio’s true split across currencies — home versus foreign — and each holding’s return broken into the asset move and the currency move, using free dated ECB reference rates.
Fees & tax
Under Portfolio → Costs. The two quiet drags on a real return.
Fees Portfolio → Fees
See what ongoing charges and trading costs actually take from your return over time — the gap between a headline figure and what you keep.
Tax Portfolio → Tax
Pick your country and see what tax actually applies: transaction taxes, dividend tax on top of any foreign withholding, and the capital-gains bill if you sold today. All of Europe plus the US, India, Singapore and the UAE — with each country’s quirks (Belgium’s TOB, UK stamp duty, India’s STT, Dutch Box 3) and every rate editable.
Holdings you’ve marked as sitting in a tax-sheltered account are dropped from the bill automatically.
Rebalance, simulate & alerts
Under Portfolio → Decisions. Turning the numbers into the next move.
Rebalance Portfolio → Rebalance
Set a target weight per holding and get the exact trades back to it — or deploy new cash to your laggards without selling a thing. It even tells you which tax lots to sell, smallest-gain first, and the gain each would realise.
Simulate a trade Portfolio → Simulate
Try a buy or sell before you commit and see how it moves your allocation, exposure and risk — a pre-trade check so a “small top-up” doesn’t quietly concentrate you.
Alerts Portfolio → Alerts
Go beyond a price level: a sharp move in a day, a holding drifting from its target, or your whole portfolio crossing a total. Native desktop notifications, checked as prices refresh, and never firing on missing data.
Wallet & net worth
Under Money → Wallet. Everything you own that isn’t a listed holding — counted once, in net worth.
Cash, savings & liabilities Money → Wallet
Record bank and savings balances, collectibles and valuables, and your debts. Net worth is the whole picture — assets minus liabilities — updated live as your holdings move.
Precious metals Money → Wallet
Gold, silver, platinum and palladium — plus copper and aluminium — priced live off futures, held in troy ounces, kilos or grams, and folded into net worth, your health score and the analytics. No extra data key.
Property & alternatives Money → Wallet
Property, private equity, vehicles and collectibles, entered by hand. Link a home to its mortgage for a live equity read-out, and see it all counted once in net worth — never double-subtracted.
On-chain crypto wallets Money → Wallet
Paste a public BTC or ETH address and its balance — native coin and ERC-20 tokens — flows into your net worth. Public addresses only: no keys, no seed phrase, nothing that could move a cent.
Income, expenses & budgets
Income & expenses Money → Income & Expenses
Record what comes in and the recurring costs that go out. The app detects recurring expenses automatically and keeps a live net worth with history, so the trend is visible, not just today’s number.
Budgets Money → Income & Expenses → Budget
Set per-category budgets — or one total cap across everything — and track them against actual spend. Pairs with Goals for saving toward a target.
Retirement & withdrawals
Under Planning → Planning. Forward-looking maths that’s honest about uncertainty.
Retirement projection / FIRE Planning → Projection
A two-phase Monte Carlo simulation estimating your FIRE number, years to independence and the odds your money lasts — modelling sequence-of-returns risk, auto-filled from your data.
Withdrawal order Planning → Withdrawal
The order you draw down accounts in retirement changes your lifetime tax bill. This lays out a tax-aware withdrawal sequence across your taxable and sheltered accounts.
Sensitivity: is it a decision or an artefact? Planning
Retirement maths rests on numbers nobody can look up. The whole withdrawal comparison is re-run across 135 nearby settings, so you can see whether the recommendation is a real decision or just an artefact of one figure you happened to type in.
Calculators & scenarios
Calculator Planning → Calculator
Growth projections with inflation-adjusted purchasing power and a 2,000-trial probability simulation, plus a full loan amortization calculator with extra payments.
Scenarios Planning → Scenarios
Save named what-ifs from your real finances — buy vs rent, retire at 55 vs 60 — each a timeline of events projected forward and compared on one chart. Branch a scenario and tweak a single variable to see what it changes.
Goals
Separate pots with a target and a date Money / Focus → Goals
House deposit, emergency fund, a car — each a separate pot with a target and a date. It tells you the monthly contribution to get there on time and whether your current rate makes it, assuming no growth unless you say so.
Assistant
Ask your wealth anything Insights → Assistant
An AI assistant that runs a private analysis of your whole picture — holdings, cash, debts and cashflow — and answers in plain English. One-click cards cover the usual questions: explain my concentration, review my allocation, where’s my cash drag, am I over-exposed to a sector, a weekly briefing, how healthy is my savings rate.
It runs on your own model, chosen in Settings — either a local model on your machine, or your own cloud API key.
Your choice, your privacy: with a local model nothing leaves your computer at all; with your own cloud key, your data goes only to the provider you picked — and never to Manticore either way.
Vault, estate & history
Under Records. Documents, the handoff nobody wants to think about, and the underlying ledger.
Vault Records → Vault
A local, AES-encrypted locker for statements, policies and the paperwork you’d hate to lose — kept with everything else, readable only on your machine.
Estate handoff Records → Estate
Beneficiaries and a full net-worth inventory, exported as a single page for the people who would need it — so what you’ve built is findable by the right person at the worst possible time.
History Records → History
The transaction ledger behind every figure — a plain record of what happened and when, which is what lets the rest of the app reconcile instead of guessing.
Global tools
The top-bar actions and shortcuts that work from anywhere.
Command palette Ctrl+K
Press Ctrl+K to jump to any tab, any holding (opens its chart) or any action — add an asset, export a report, sync, settings — without touching the mouse.
PDF report Top bar · Ctrl+K
Export a designed one-page A4 summary of your position — net worth, holdings, P&L and cash — generated locally, with no service involved. Stamped with your licence name.
Dark & light theme Top bar
Switch the whole app from the top bar — every chart included, not just the panels around them. Status colours are re-tuned for each theme so a loss reads as a loss on white too, and your choice is remembered next launch.
Settings & data keys Top bar → Settings
Settings is where you set up sync, your Assistant model (a local one or your own cloud key), and, optionally, your own market-data key. Prices work with no key; adding a free Twelve Data (US) or paid EODHD (European coverage) key moves you onto your own licensed feed — and an EODHD key also powers charts, backtest, crash replay and the Fear & Greed index.
Common questions
Do I need an API key to see prices?
No. Live stocks, ETFs and crypto work immediately, with nothing to configure and no account anywhere. Adding your own data key is an upgrade, not a requirement — with an EODHD key it powers the charts, backtest, crash replay and the Fear & Greed index too, not just the live quotes.
Does it cover European listings?
Yes — Euronext Brussels and Amsterdam, Xetra, the LSE and more, alongside US markets, working out of the box with no setup. Your own optional data key (Twelve Data or EODHD) is configured in Settings.
Can I use it on more than one computer?
Yes. Point the app at a folder you already sync — Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive or a shared drive — and it keeps a second machine in step. Only the encrypted copy is written there, so your holdings are never readable in that folder, and it needs a passphrase set. If two machines are edited at once, the newest change wins and the older one is kept as a backup.
I forgot my passphrase — can you reset it?
No, and that’s deliberate: the passphrase encrypts your data on your own machine and is never sent anywhere, so there’s no server that could reset it. If you’ve lost it and have no backup made before it was set, the data can’t be recovered. Keep the passphrase somewhere safe, and export a backup regularly.
I lost my licence key.
It’s in your original purchase email. You can re-request it, or reach out to support and we’ll resend it to the email you bought with.
Which platforms does it run on?
Windows 10 and 11. There’s no macOS or Linux build yet.
How do I move to a new PC?
Export a backup on the old machine, install and activate the app on the new one, then import the backup. If you use sync, pointing the new machine at the same synced folder does it for you.
What if it isn’t for me?
Email within 14 days of buying for a full refund, no questions asked — the same window EU law gives you on any online purchase. You lose nothing by trying it: your data was only ever on your own machine anyway.