Importing a Trading 212 CSV export

A transaction log is not a holdings statement

Most brokers print what you own. Trading 212 exports what you did — every order, dividend and deposit, in date order, with no summary of the resulting position anywhere in the file.

So the position is computed rather than read: each instrument's rows are replayed in order, buys add shares and cost, sells remove shares at the running average, and what remains at the end is the holding. Twelve shares bought and two sold is a position of ten, at the average the purchases paid — not at the price of the sale. An instrument bought and fully sold is a closed position and does not come back as a holding.

What gets extracted

• Buys — each becomes a dated contribution with quantity and price per share.
• Sells — recorded as sales, not as negative contributions. A sale is not a withdrawal of the money you invested, and treating it as one distorts every return figure that follows.
• Dividends — recorded as income received, kept apart from money you added yourself.
• ISIN per row — what binds each trade to the right listing. The same ETF trades in several currencies on several venues, and the identifier is what tells them apart when the ticker cannot.
• Positions — derived from the above, then shown for review like any other import.

Cash deposits and interest in the file are not treated as purchases. Only executed buys become contributions, because the contributed-versus-market split is only meaningful if "contributed" means money that actually bought something.

Export the widest period

One long export beats several short ones. The purchase history is what the monthly value record is rebuilt from, so a CSV covering January to today gives you a portfolio with months of record; a CSV covering last week gives you last week.

Re-exporting an overlapping period later is safe: rows already imported are matched and listed as skipped duplicates, with counts shown before you confirm.

What the import does not do

• It does not connect to Trading 212. Only the file you upload is read.
• It does not invent a holdings table. The positions come from your own transactions; if the export is partial, the derived position is partial too — and that is visible in the review before anything is confirmed.
• It does not reconstruct valuations nobody recorded. Where a period has no snapshot, the gap is shown rather than interpolated across.
• It is not a tax document. The cross-border figures are dividend-withholding estimates, explained in the withholding methodology.

Common questions

Can I import Trading 212 without an API key?

Yes. The CSV export from the History screen is all that is needed — no API key, no credentials, no connection to the account.

Trading 212 only exports transactions. Does that work?

Yes. The holdings are computed from the log: buys less sells per instrument, with the average price recomputed across the shares that remain. A position bought and fully sold does not reappear as a holding.

Which export should I choose?

The CSV from History, covering the widest period you want on record. One long export produces the purchase history and, through it, the positions and the monthly value record.

What happens to dividends and deposits in the file?

Dividends are recorded as income rather than as money you invested, and cash deposits are not counted as purchases. Only executed buys become contributions.