Retail brokers can't show time-weighted returns, so DCA value investors can never tell if their picks actually beat the index

Summary

Self-directed investors who buy individual stocks and dollar-cost-average every paycheck describe a broken feedback loop with their own brokerage: 'every time I deposit my total % gain drops,' because brokers only display simple or money-weighted returns. To isolate portfolio skill from the timing of cash flows you need time-weighted return (TWR), but no mainstream retail brokerage surfaces it, and one investor notes plainly that TWR 'is not popular cause it's hard to calculate.' The result is that these investors are flying blind — they cannot answer the single question that would validate or correct their whole value-picking process, 'am I actually beating the S&P 500, or did I just give up on benchmarking?' Their only options today are maintaining fragile unitized-accounting/TWR spreadsheets on the side (which most abandon) or accepting a misleading MWR number that makes disciplined behavior look like failure. This is unsolved and high-pain: the data exists inside every broker, but none of them turn it into the one honest, deposits-adjusted performance signal a normal long-term stock picker needs, so they second-guess their strategy without any reliable evidence.