Marking to market

This is the process of updating a portfolio to reflect the latest available prices.

“Marking to market” simply means updating the value of an asset or a portfolio of assets to reflect the latest available prices for said assets. This is easy to do when assets are publicly listed, highly liquid (easily bought and sold) and fungible (substitutable for one another). For example, FTSE 100 shares trade in huge quantities on a daily basis, so you can be very confident of the value of any shares in your portfolio simply by referring to the market price at any given moment.

It’s harder when transactions are less frequent, assets are not fungible, and the sales process is more involved, however. For example, you might have a rough idea of what your house is worth – and estate agents and surveyors will certainly give you an opinion on the matter – but the truth is that you don’t know for sure until you actually sell it. And on any given day, you can only be loosely confident of your estimate.

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