Why Do Performance Numbers Differ From My Brokerage?

Overview

A return percentage in Mezzi can differ from your brokerage's because the two are measuring different things — most often because money you moved in or out of an account is being counted as a gain or a loss rather than as a transfer. If you see an unexplained swing that matches the size of a recent deposit, withdrawal or reallocation, that's the known cause, we're fixing it, and your balances are unaffected. Email help@mezzi.com with the account name, the period and the figure your brokerage shows.

⚠ What You May See

• A weekly return that closely matches the size of a transfer rather than any market move — for example a -14.1% return on an IRA rollover account in a week when about $41,000 was moved into CDs.

• A large percentage gain on a savings or cash account right after a deposit landed — a transfer in reading as a triple-digit "gain."

• A savings account showing 0.00% for a week in which it did earn interest.

• Your weekly notification or headline balance card reporting a different percentage from the account-level figure inside the same report.

• Bond or CD positions in a Fidelity account where the return looks wrong by roughly 100×.

If the balance itself is what disagrees rather than the return, read Why Does My Account Balance in Mezzi Differ from What My Brokerage Shows? instead — that article covers pending trades, settlement timing and refresh lag, and this one won't repeat it.

⚙ How to Fix It

1. Check whether money moved. Look at the account's transactions for the period in question. If deposits, withdrawals, transfers or a reallocation into new positions add up to roughly the size of the discrepancy, that's the cause, and there's nothing wrong with your holdings or your balance.

2. Check whether the holdings are identified. Positions without a public ticker can't be priced day to day, which distorts anything derived from price. If any holdings are listed as unknown or without a symbol, work through Why Your Retirement Plan Holdings Show as "Unknown" or Have No Ticker first.

3. Compare like for like. Brokerages usually publish a time-weighted or money-weighted return that already strips out contributions. A raw balance-to-balance change over the same window is a different measure and will legitimately differ, particularly in a month when you contributed.

4. Send it to us. Email help@mezzi.com with the account name, the exact period, the percentage Mezzi shows, the figure your brokerage shows, and any transfers during that window. Reports like these are what let us pin down which of the calculation paths is at fault.

💡 Why This Happens

Two separate defects produce most of these reports, and we've confirmed both.

1. Capital flows were being read as performance. Weekly performance was measured from the raw change in an account's balance, so money entering or leaving counted as a gain or a loss. A transfer into a savings account surfaced as a large percentage gain; a withdrawal surfaced as a loss. The corrected approach tracks money in and out of each account per day and measures performance only against the capital actually at work.

1. A unit mismatch on certain bond positions. Bond transactions arriving through one of our data providers were being converted as though the provider reported them in $100-par lots. Some connections — Fidelity among them — report both the holding and the transaction at face value instead, so the two disagreed by a factor of 100. Where that happened, a bond or CD purchase wasn't fully removed from the account's prior-week history, and the account read as a loss roughly the size of the purchase. The conversion is now applied only where the position's unit price confirms it's needed.

1. One residual we can't fully close. Interest a savings account earns on its own balance has to stay on the performance side of the split, and one of our providers sends interest and wages under the same generic income category with no detail to tell them apart. For accounts on that provider, some interest still counts as a flow. The effect is always conservative — you may see 0.00% instead of a small gain, never a transfer reported as a gain. We've raised it with the provider.

Important Notes

Performance history isn't rewritten retroactively. After a fix deploys, figures are correct going forward; a week that was already recorded keeps the values captured at the time.

Manually added assets — real estate, vehicles and other alternatives — are modelled as a straight line from purchase price to current value, with no daily change. Comparison and performance modes are deliberately disabled on their charts, so don't read a flat line there as a data problem.

🗨 Still Need Help?

Email help@mezzi.com or text/call (415) 763-6997 with:

• the account name in Mezzi and the institution

• the exact period and the return percentage Mezzi displayed

• the return your brokerage shows for the same period, and which measure it is

• any deposits, withdrawals or reallocations during that window

• a screenshot of both figures

Common Questions

• Is my balance wrong too? Usually not. These are calculation problems in the return figure, not in the underlying positions. If the balance is also wrong, that's a separate issue with its own article.

• Why does my weekly notification say something different from the report it opens? The push notification and the headline balance card use a raw balance change, while the account-level figures inside are measured net of transfers. We know about the inconsistency and it's tracked.

• Does contributing to a 401(k) drag my return down in Mezzi? It shouldn't, and where it did, that's the flow-accounting defect described above. Contributions add capital; they aren't losses.

• Which number should I trust in the meantime? Your brokerage's, for return. Mezzi's strength is the consolidated picture across every account — a single account's return is best checked at the source until this is fully closed out.