Big Downward Spikes in Portfolio Value

Steve29

I've just imported a big file from Quicken 2007. After some tweaking in Q2007 (changing the security types from Bond to Mutual Fund), everything seems to have come over intact.

With one glaring exception. If I look at the Portfolio Value graph, it has very dramatic spikes. During a roughly 5-year period, it changes by about 30% roughly every 3 months or so. Needless to say, this doesn't reflect reality, and if I make a similar graph in Q2007 there are no spikes.



I've looked at security prices and don't see any changes that would account for this. Does anyone know how I figure out where the error is, or how do I fix it?

Thanks!

Steve29

More research. It is a single mutual fund. Every downward spike represents a shift in the decimal point for the price -- like this: 95.10 became 9.51. This doesn't conform with the price in Q2007, which is correct. I see how to change the values, but it's a pain. 

This appears to represent a bug in the import process. Any suggestions, other than hand editing the prices?

Steve29

More research -- every mistake happens on the last day of the month. But not every month. Sometimes every other month, sometimes every third month.

Steve29

I'm also seeing prices that weren't present in Q2007, and in addition, sometimes, even though a price is present in 2007, it's off by a cent or two in 2019. So is Q2019 grabbing all prices off the net? If so, it appears to be making mistakes on the last day of the month.

NotACPA

What fund?  So that we can research it's valuation.

Steve29

Fidelity Contra. I've changed all the munged prices by hand. Big pain, but it's done now.

NotACPA

Conveniently, I own Fidelity Contrafund also.  And here's the graph of FCNTX's prices over the last 2 years.  Note, that I download into my copy of Q Mon-Sat.

Note that I'm not showing any big downward spikes in the prices. SO, have you edited your Price History for the fund to identify and remove the anomalies?

Also, are you aware that the fund did a 10 for 1 split in August 2018?

Steve29

Yeah, I knew about the split. Strange that it's 10:1 and all the prices were off by the same amount. But the problem went back to 2014. I corrected all the prices by hand, checking against Q2007 every time. PITA.

And here's something even weirder. I checked the graph about an hour ago. All good. Just opened Q2019 again -- some of the spikes are back. What the heck is going on here?

Also, how did you get that chart? Can I do that on a Mac?

NotACPA

Between your fixing the prices manually and "just opened QM2019 again" was there a download ... of quotes in particular?

And as my signature info states, I'm running QWin.

Steve29

It might have done it automatically, but it wasn't anything I did.