hypothetical investment transactions?

JoeBlow

Is there any way to create hypothetical investment transactions in Quicken in a manner that allows you to track what you'd gain if you did the transaction, but that does not affect net worth? Can I just create an investment account and flag it as separate?

NotACPA

Your proposed method would work .. just be sure to not include that account in ANY reports.

Sherlock

You may certainly create an investment account and mark it as Keep this account separate or event use distinct data file but, if you're just interested in estimating capital gains, you may want to consider using the Capital Gain Estimator (select the Investing tab and Tools > Capital Gain Estimator).

Jim_Harman

Have you looked at Investing > Investing Tools > Buy/Sell Preview or the Capital Gains Estimator?

I haven't used these, but I took a quick look and maybe they will do what you want.

{edit] Sherlock beat me to it!

JoeBlow

Thanks to the reference to Capital Gain Estimator, which I had not used before but just had reason to do so. However, that does not apply to what I want to do. I want to simulate buying some investments, then tracking the outcome over time.

Jim_Harman

JoeBlow said:

Thanks to the reference to Capital Gain Estimator, which I had not used before but just had reason to do so. However, that does not apply to what I want to do. I want to simulate buying some investments, then tracking the outcome over time.

An account marked as Separate would work for that, but you would have to enter any dividends or other distributions manually to get a complete picture.

To keep your hypothetical investments completely separate, you could instead use a different Quicken file for them.

Morningstar's Portfolio Manager is also good for this, but you need a Morningstar subscription. As long as your securities are publicly traded, it will notify you of any distributions and you can tell it to reinvest them or receive them as cash. You can even tell it you bought the securities years ago and it will figure out the past distributions and performance.

M*'s analysis tools are quite a lot nicer than Quicken's. 

They have a 14 day free trial if you want to check it out.