A reference model lets you read a model as analysis instead of instruction. Where a target model drives trades: buy this, sell that. A reference model changes nothing. It classifies your holdings by asset class: equity, fixed income, real assets, and cash. It splits equity further by region (U.S., International, Emerging Markets, Global), and shows how your actual mix compares to the model's targets.
That distinction matters most when you pick your own stocks. Assigning an all-fund model as a target to an account of individual stocks would read as "sell everything" because none of your tickers is a fund in the model. As a reference, the same model instead tells you something useful: you're 43 points overweight U.S. equity and own no bonds. Nothing is sold.
How holdings are placed. Each holding is sorted into an asset class from its downloaded profile, and equity is split further by region, which for an individual stock comes from the company's country. A stock the app hasn't classified yet still lands in U.S. equity rather than dropping out; update prices to refine anything shown as "not yet classified".
An account can carry a target, a reference, both, or neither. Set a reference model on the Accounts page, or choose Just compare in setup. The "Compared to…" panel then appears on the Dashboard and Rebalancing for as long as the reference is set. It is a standing second opinion, never a trade list, and pairs naturally with a self-directed slice: the lens shows where your money sits, the self-directed slice is where you mean it to sit.