You will be able to list the records an overseas investor needs and set up a place to keep them.
Rachel wanted to work out what her US investments had really earned over three years. She opened her broker app and found she could only see eighteen months of history on screen. Her first broker, which she had left two years earlier, had closed her account and the login no longer worked. The trade confirmations from that period were somewhere in an old email inbox, mixed in with promotions. She could reconstruct about half of it.
Nobody tells you to keep records when you open an account. The first time you need them is usually the first time you find out they are gone. This lesson sets out what to keep and a simple way to keep it.
Trade confirmations come first. Each one shows what you bought or sold, the quantity, the price, the date, the commission and fees, and often the exchange rate if a conversion was made. They are the only exact record of what each holding cost you, and lesson 7.2, Track your real return in Singapore dollars, needs them.
Monthly or periodic statements come next. They show what you held at each date, the cash balance, and the activity in between. They let you check that nothing went missing and give you a snapshot for any month you need.
Third are the dividend and withholding records. As lesson 3.1, Why 30% of a US dividend never reaches you, showed, the gross amount, the tax withheld and the net amount may appear on different lines or screens. Keep whatever shows all three. Some brokers also issue a yearly tax summary that lists every dividend and withholding for the year. If yours does, keep it.
Last come the FX conversion records. If you convert separately from your trades, at the broker or through a bank, each conversion has its own confirmation showing the amounts and the rate. Those are what you used to measure your spread in lesson 2.1, and they are what you need to work out your returns in Singapore dollars.
Do not rely on the broker to keep your history for you. Many brokers show only a limited period online. Some move older statements into an archive you have to request. If you close an account, your login may stop working, and getting old records then means writing to support and waiting. And if a broker closes or is taken over, the new owner's systems may not carry the old history.
The simplest habit is to download each month's statement when it arrives. It takes a minute. Trade confirmations often arrive by email, so save them as files rather than leaving them in the inbox.
Two more documents belong in the folder, and most people do not have them.
The first is the evidence for your W-8BEN. Lesson 3.2, What the W-8BEN does and does not do, ended with Hakim taking a screenshot of his tax form status and expiry date. Keep that, or a copy of the form if your broker lets you download it, with the date it was signed.
The second is the account opening pack, including the client agreement. That is the document you searched in lesson 1.4, Check your broker's licence and custody set-up, for the legal entity and the custody arrangements. Agreements change over time, so save the current version with the date you downloaded it, and save new versions when the broker notifies you of changes.
Make one folder per broker. Inside each, use a file name pattern that sorts by date, putting the year first, then the month, then what the document is. A statement for March 2026 becomes 2026-03 statement. A trade confirmation becomes 2026-03-14 buy world fund. A W-8BEN screenshot becomes 2026-05 W-8BEN status.
The year-first pattern means files sort themselves in order in any folder view, without your doing anything. A consistent description means you can search for every statement or every confirmation in one go.
Where you keep the folders matters less than keeping them in one place, backed up, and somewhere you can find again in five years. A cloud drive with two-factor sign-in, plus an occasional copy on an external drive, covers most people. Module 7's last two lessons build on this folder: lesson 7.3 points your executor to it, and lesson 7.4 draws your numbers from it.
Rachel could not recover everything from her first broker. She wrote to its support team, asked for statements for the full period she held the account, and received most of them as files a few weeks later. For her current broker, she downloaded every statement the app still showed and set a monthly calendar reminder to save the next one.
It took her one evening to set up and now takes two minutes a month. For the activity, create a folder for each broker you use, and download the last twelve months of statements and dividend records into it, named with the pattern above.
Create a folder per broker and download the last twelve months of statements and dividend records into it.
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