USD and CAN investments in the same account

Chris24

My RSP account has mostly Canadian stocks however I do have USD stocks in the same account. When you open the retirement account in Quicken you must choose the currency which set the currency for all holdings. When I update the security prices the problem is the price of the USD stock comes in as Canadian and there is no way to change the currency of the stock and that value is dictated by the account. My total portfolio is always out by the exchange value between currencies for that day. Is there a solution that I am missing?

q_lurker

You must keep the USD stocks in a separate account from the C$ stocks.  No other option.

From what I have read, that is what your brokerage actually doing in the back room even if their reports suggest otherwise.  No personal experience.  

splasher

I've got a couple Canadian company's stocks in my accounts, but I'm guessing that it works since they are traded on the US exchanges which I suppose is different from being Canadian stocks.

OR, am I just fooling myself into thinking that and the brokerage is doing some backroom manipulations?

q_lurker

splasher said:

I've got a couple Canadian company's stocks in my accounts, but I'm guessing that it works since they are traded on the US exchanges which I suppose is different from being Canadian stocks.

OR, am I just fooling myself into thinking that and the brokerage is doing some backroom manipulations?

If the Canadian companies are being traded on US exchanges, they are being traded in USD.  That was not the situation I was addressing nor that the OP was citing (as I understood him).  Currency is established at the account level and all securities in that account must be trading in that currency.  

Arctic Hare

@Chris: In this discussion it is important to differentiate between the brokerage account and the Quicken account. Some Canadian brokers (e.g. RBC Direct Investing, which I use) allow you to have CAD and USD subaccounts within one common account number. To model this in Quicken, you have to set up two separate Quicken accounts. One in CAD and one in USD. There is no way to have a single Q account that handles both CAD denominated securities and USD denominated securities.

In my case, RBC DI provides me one statement, which includes the sub-statement for each of the CAD and USD denominated subaccounts. I then use that one statement to reconcile one CAD Q account and one USD Q account.

Chris24

splasher said:

I've got a couple Canadian company's stocks in my accounts, but I'm guessing that it works since they are traded on the US exchanges which I suppose is different from being Canadian stocks.

OR, am I just fooling myself into thinking that and the brokerage is doing some backroom manipulations?

Thank you for the reply. Yes that is the problem. The account is set up as Canadian as its a default for Retirement accounts on Canadian versions of Quicken however some of the stocks held are USD on US exchanges. The broker totals the entire amount by applying the daily exchange rate however the when you download the prices it comes in as in Canadian as that is how the account is set up. In short there is always a mismatch of totals unless I manually go in and update the price and/or elect not to download the prices for the US securities. I actually feel its a bit of a short coming in Quicken as you should not have to set up two accounts (one CAN & 1 USD) for one investment account. I am sure a lot of people diversify their portfolio by having both CAN and USD securities in their retirement/brokerage accounts.

Arctic Hare

splasher said:

I've got a couple Canadian company's stocks in my accounts, but I'm guessing that it works since they are traded on the US exchanges which I suppose is different from being Canadian stocks.

OR, am I just fooling myself into thinking that and the brokerage is doing some backroom manipulations?

@Chris: It is actually two different accounts "behind the scenes" at the broker as well. They just roll them up into one for your convenience. When you set up the two mirror accounts in Q, then Q will also do the daily conversion of the USD denominated securities into CAD so that your net worth and other calculations show the total value in CAD with F/X rate conversion. While it takes a bit of extra work to set up the two accounts, it actually works quite well. Personally, if I had to choose between setting currency at the security level and using one account versus setting currency at the account level and using two accounts I would choose the way it is currently configured as I can see that the other approach could have undesirable implications.

kh57smth

Chris;

The good news, once you go to the trouble of setting up a Canadian dollar account for Canadian assets and USD dollar account for US assets and download the daily CAD-USD exchange rate is that Quicken converts your US assets to the currency you have chosen for all its reports.   I have chosen Canadian dollars.

To keep it simple I name my accounts XXX CDN and XXX USD so I know which currency is in the account.

This is a really good feature in Quicken well worth the time to set up two accounts; one Cdn and one US for your RRSP account.  

Ken

Microfiche

What I do is have 2 accounts, one in USD and one in CAD. I reconcile at the end of each month and transfer the cash to or from the USD account so that it always has a $0.00 cash balance (cash balance is always in CAD). My statement from National Bank always shows the exchange rate of the transaction, so that is the rate I use when entering buy/sells in the USD account.
I struggled to find a good way to do this, bu t this seems to be the best way I have found.

Arctic Hare

Microfiche said:

What I do is have 2 accounts, one in USD and one in CAD. I reconcile at the end of each month and transfer the cash to or from the USD account so that it always has a $0.00 cash balance (cash balance is always in CAD). My statement from National Bank always shows the exchange rate of the transaction, so that is the rate I use when entering buy/sells in the USD account.
I struggled to find a good way to do this, bu t this seems to be the best way I have found.

My main brokerage, RBC Direct Investing, allows me to hold a USD balance and a CAD balance for a common account. Using two accounts in Q facilitates such as well.