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QWin 2017: Portfolio X-Ray Does Not Find Assets

unknown

I just purchased Quicken 2017 Premier, R4, 26.1.4.5. When applying it to a particular portfolio it correctly shows an asset allocation of 33% domestic bonds, 65 % cash, and 2% large cap stocks, which is obviously a very conservative asset allocation. I thought I would try the Portfolio X-Ray feature which was not included in the versions of Quicken I have previously used. The X-Ray feature told me this was a very aggressive portfolio because it completely ignored the bonds and cash, only including in its analysis the large cap stock that makes up 2%. What's wrong with this apparently useless and misleading feature?

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NotACPA

Obvious question ... but were you including All Securities? Because it seems to work properly for all combinations of accounts that I could test

unknown

Thanks for the suggestion, but that does not seem to be the problem. The top bar shows "All Accounts" and "All Securities," and I refreshed X-Ray, and even exited and restarted Quicken. Same result: no bonds or cash show in the X-Ray even though the bonds are set to Quicken's type of "Bond" and Asset Class of "Domestic Bonds." And the bonds and cash are properly allocated within Quicken's Asset Allocation screen.

NotACPA

Thanks for the suggestion, but that does not seem to be the problem. The top bar shows "All Accounts" and "All Securities," and I refreshed X-Ray, and even exited and restarted Quicken. Same result: no bonds or cash show in the X-Ray even though the bonds are set to Quicken's type of "Bond" and Asset Class of "Domestic Bonds." And the bonds and cash are properly allocated within Quicken's Asset Allocation screen.

OK, another possibly obvious question. Do the bonds have ticker symbols associated with them? I saw something that indicated that securities for inclusion needed the tickers ... so that Morningstar could look them up.

AND, in Q, how is the cash held? In a MMF, or as cash in a brokerage acct? If a MMF, does it have a ticker?

Jim_Harman

Also the X-Ray depends on your holdings having correct tickers (or maybe CUSIPs?) and being in Morningstar's database, which is OK for stocks and publicly traded mutual funds, but not for things like TIAA Traditional, 401k Stable Value funds, etc. When you say "it" at the top of your post, I assume you are referring to Quicken's asset allocation. Does a lot of your portfolio show up as "not classified" in the X-ray asset allocation?

You might also look at the Top 10 holdings at the bottom of the X-ray to see if anything major is missing.

NotACPA

Also the X-Ray depends on your holdings having correct tickers (or maybe CUSIPs?) and being in Morningstar's database, which is OK for stocks and publicly traded mutual funds, but not for things like TIAA Traditional, 401k Stable Value funds, etc. When you say "it" at the top of your post, I assume you are referring to Quicken's asset allocation. Does a lot of your portfolio show up as "not classified" in the X-ray asset allocation?

You might also look at the Top 10 holdings at the bottom of the X-ray to see if anything major is missing.

I found out about the ticker requirement when I tried X-ray on one of my wife's accounts ... which is at TIAA and holds only TIAA Traditional.

Jim_Harman

Another shortcoming of the X-ray analysis is that for bond funds it classifies all of the holdings into one of their bond style boxes. This is inaccurate for funds that hold a mixture of maturities and ratings like Vanguard Total Bond Market. And it gets very confused for the popular Pimco Total Return, which acts like an intermediate term bond fund but holds both long and short positions using a lot of derivatives.

unknown

Thanks for the suggestion, but that does not seem to be the problem. The top bar shows "All Accounts" and "All Securities," and I refreshed X-Ray, and even exited and restarted Quicken. Same result: no bonds or cash show in the X-Ray even though the bonds are set to Quicken's type of "Bond" and Asset Class of "Domestic Bonds." And the bonds and cash are properly allocated within Quicken's Asset Allocation screen.

Some of the bonds have a 7-digit number in the greyed-out Symbol field, which is the second from the top in the Edit Security Details dialog box. I didn't enter these "symbols" so perhaps Quicken looked them up from the bond description or from the purchase transaction. But bonds don't show in the X-Ray whether the Symbol is present or not. The Edit Security Details screen has an Other Info button and when this is used it shows a CISIP number for the bond at the bottom of the screen. All of the bonds have these CUSIP numbers. Again, I did not enter CUSIP numbers, so I assume Quicken looked them up.
Regarding the cash, some is in cash in brokerage accounts and some is in CDs held in a brokerage account or in banks. All CDs are entered in Quicken as Type=CD and Asset Class=Cash. None show up in the X-Ray. Some have CUSIP numbers and some do not. No Money Market Funds are involved.

unknown

Yes, when I said "it" was correct in Quicken I was referring to the Asset Allocation tab in Quicken's Portfolio view. This tab includes in the asset allocation the bonds, CDs, and cash items that are missing in the X-Ray tab of the portfolio.
The "Not Classified" allocation in the X-Ray is zero. So is the Cash, Bonds, Other, and Non-US Stocks. US Stocks is listed at 100%. The top ten list at the bottom is missing everything except the stock that makes up 2% of the portfolio.

unknown

Another shortcoming of the X-ray analysis is that for bond funds it classifies all of the holdings into one of their bond style boxes. This is inaccurate for funds that hold a mixture of maturities and ratings like Vanguard Total Bond Market. And it gets very confused for the popular Pimco Total Return, which acts like an intermediate term bond fund but holds both long and short positions using a lot of derivatives.

No bond funds involved in my portfolio where X-Ray isn't working. All bonds are individual US corporate bonds purchased through a brokerage house and held there.

unknown

Obvious question ... but were you including All Securities? Because it seems to work properly for all combinations of accounts that I could test

This is a reasonable suggestion. Just reselecting "All Accounts" caused an update that corrected my allocation analysis and the report.

RickDetroit

I know this thread is one year old, but I have the EXACT same problem that Donald Range posted. Individual bonds and brokered cd's ARE omitted from these calculations in Portfolio X-ray. Oddly, though, sweeps cash (which has neither symbol or cusip) IS included correctly.

Those individual bonds and brokered cd's are in my Quicken files (including both symbols and CUSIPS, properly categorized too) and are correctly updating with regard to prices. They simply don't show up in the Quicken Portfolio X-ray. Not at all, not even in "Not Classified". Similarly, when using the Morningstar X-ray tool outside of Quicken, it too doesn't recognize either symbol or CUSIP for these types of securities. So, in a way, it seems the problem originates with Morningstar. But it does severely limit the functionality of this x-ray feature in Quicken for some of us. I'm using Quicken Premier 2016, R14.12, but it's the same issue as was in the 2017 version originally posted above. I guess there are not a lot of us with this concern, but I'd even be happy if Quicken could simply put this stuff into the "Not Classified" line of their X-ray, rather than just omitting.

Jim_Harman

I know this thread is one year old, but I have the EXACT same problem that Donald Range posted. Individual bonds and brokered cd's ARE omitted from these calculations in Portfolio X-ray. Oddly, though, sweeps cash (which has neither symbol or cusip) IS included correctly.

Those individual bonds and brokered cd's are in my Quicken files (including both symbols and CUSIPS, properly categorized too) and are correctly updating with regard to prices. They simply don't show up in the Quicken Portfolio X-ray. Not at all, not even in "Not Classified". Similarly, when using the Morningstar X-ray tool outside of Quicken, it too doesn't recognize either symbol or CUSIP for these types of securities. So, in a way, it seems the problem originates with Morningstar. But it does severely limit the functionality of this x-ray feature in Quicken for some of us. I'm using Quicken Premier 2016, R14.12, but it's the same issue as was in the 2017 version originally posted above. I guess there are not a lot of us with this concern, but I'd even be happy if Quicken could simply put this stuff into the "Not Classified" line of their X-ray, rather than just omitting.

I agree the X-Ray would be much more useful if there were some way to force it to treat securities that Morningstar does not track into the asset classes you have assigned in Quicken rather than just ignoring them.

One challenge with this is that Quicken's built-in asset classes are limited and there is no way to create additional ones (mid cap, real estate, emerging markets, etc)

RickDetroit

I know this thread is one year old, but I have the EXACT same problem that Donald Range posted. Individual bonds and brokered cd's ARE omitted from these calculations in Portfolio X-ray. Oddly, though, sweeps cash (which has neither symbol or cusip) IS included correctly.

Those individual bonds and brokered cd's are in my Quicken files (including both symbols and CUSIPS, properly categorized too) and are correctly updating with regard to prices. They simply don't show up in the Quicken Portfolio X-ray. Not at all, not even in "Not Classified". Similarly, when using the Morningstar X-ray tool outside of Quicken, it too doesn't recognize either symbol or CUSIP for these types of securities. So, in a way, it seems the problem originates with Morningstar. But it does severely limit the functionality of this x-ray feature in Quicken for some of us. I'm using Quicken Premier 2016, R14.12, but it's the same issue as was in the 2017 version originally posted above. I guess there are not a lot of us with this concern, but I'd even be happy if Quicken could simply put this stuff into the "Not Classified" line of their X-ray, rather than just omitting.

I know what you mean. I could benefit from that type of expanded list of asset classes too.

The thing that I found weird in the Quicken Morningstar tool was that it DID somehow pick up my non-invested cash correctly (just from a "sweeps account", no symbols involved). Which sort of implies Quicken can interact with the Morningstar tool, beyond just the security and value fields. So if Quicken is capable of that, it seems like it could take other uniquely classified assets and pull them into the tool too. Of course, this stuff always sounds easy when you aren't a programmer (and I'm not)

Todd Swygert

I’m running Quicken Premier – 2019, Version R18.16, Build 27.1.18.16
When I view the Portfolio X-Ray, one of my investments which is 25% of my portfolio does not appear in the Portfolio X-Ray results. My filter criteria is “All accounts” and “All securities”.

The missing investment is Fidelity Global ex U.S. Index Fund – FSGGX, my other Fidelity investments appear. Pricing shows up for this investment in other areas, just not in Portfolio X-Ray, like previous poster. This investment should be very popular, not sure why it would not be listed by MorningStar.

Previous poster wrote this “Of course, this stuff always sounds easy when you aren't a programmer”, well, I’m a programmer, and that makes it more frustrating after 2.5 years.

If an investment cannot be included, that should be highlighted in the results, instead of ignored, just like previous poster recommended 2 years ago.