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How can Quicken help me determine the performance of two money market funds I own?

garciagu

When the funds issue monthly earnings (whether they are interest or dividends is irrelevant for the purpose of my question, call it whatever you want just don't get caught up on this issue please!) and they get reinvested in the fund, Quicken downloads the dividends and correctly add the amount to my fund, (dividends is what the funds label the earnings in the reports they mail me by the way). The total gain is not calculated by Quicken which I understand, being that dividends aren't considered capital gains. But so here is my problem: One fund has better dividends that the other but I can't figure out where does Quicken tells me which fund is doing better. Does Quicken have a way to determine which Money Market fund performs better? Can Quicken give me the performance of a Money Market Fund?

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Accepted answers

jacobs

@garciagu Aha! So the key information you hadn't shared until now is that you're not using the current version of Quicken!

(For future reference, always include what version of Quicken you're using when you post a question, as it will help you get appropriate replies.)

Your screenshots look like you're using Quicken 2017 or 2016. And yes, you're right; the performance reporting features were added in Quicken 2018.

All comments

NotACPA

In what type of account are you holding these MMFs?

Ps56k2

Well.... you're the only one so far going on about Divs vs Interest vs "Cap Gains" ?

Anyway.... which Quicken account area of your portfolio are these MMF setup -
- top part - Banking
- bottom part - Investing

I have both....
MMF at Ally Bank and several MMF at brokerages like Fidelity & Vanguard.

All show as Re-Invest-Divs and you will never see "Cap Gains" -
as the price of a MMF is usually fixed at $1.00 -
so there is never a price change, and therefore Cost Basis = Current

garciagu

So I created an Investment Account in Quicken and when I did I provided the name of the Financial Institution and login credentials, and when I download the activity for that broker it automatically allocates the assets for the fund in that account. Which as I said is listed under Investments in Quicken

NotACPA

"allocates the assets for the fund in that account. "

Do you mean that it downloaded your current securities, and their quantities and share value? Or something else.

AND, how did it download the MMF's? As securities, or as Cash?

garciagu

"...All show as Re-Invest-Divs and you will never see "Cap Gains" -
as the price of a MMF is usually fixed at $1.00 -
so there is never a price change, and therefore Cost Basis = Current "

Right, and that is my problem. Because that doesn't tell me how is one of the funds performing when compared against another. Both of the funds are under the same broker account under Investments.

--ps. I mentioned the Div vs Int vs CG only because I've read threads where this question was asked before and the threads get de-railed arguing about what is the income from a Market Fund and the original question never gets answered.

garciagu

Do you mean that it downloaded your current securities, and their quantities and share value? Or something else.

-- The two Market Funds got downloaded and created as security with a share value of $1, as one would expect.

AND, how did it download the MMF's? As securities, or as Cash?

-- securities

NotACPA

"AND, how did it download the MMF's? As securities, or as Cash?-- securities "

Then simply run a REPORTS, Investing, Investment Performance report, selecting only those 2 securities.

jacobs

I think we're getting lost in the forest here.

To show your investment performance, click on the account in the left sidebar in which your money market funds are contained. (Or you could just click on the main Investing heading in the sidebar.) If you are on the Transactions regisster, click the button at the top for Portfolio. Under the graph of your investment perfomance, click on the first fileter and set it to Performance. Click on the second filter to set it to Group by Security. The result will be a screen showing performance results for all your securities. Scroll down to see your money market funds to see which performed better. On this screen, you can cick the columns icon to set which performance metrics you want to see: Average Annual Return (for YTD, 1 year, 3 years or 5 years) or Reurn on Invesment (for YTD, 1 year, 3 years or 5 years). Here's a screen shot showing all 8 of those columns, with the filters set as I indicated:

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/ql/maadrgse5ib0.png

Ps56k2

ok - so now we have the basic info -
[removed - violation of community guidelines]

A normal brokerage held MMF - like my Fidelity or Vanguard - downloads the ReInvDivs transactions.... but how to measure the overall perf of the MMF based upon these Divs ?

Hmmm... not sure in Quicken - I usually poke around on the brokerage website looking for the "annual returns" and just compare them by hand. Also, don't forget to look at the fund ER vs just the yield...

garciagu

The version of the quicken does not have a filter called 'Performance' anywhere I look. Not on the register, not on the reports, not on the graphic.

Screen Shot 2019-09-18 at 2.32.10 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-09-18 at 2.32.02 PM.png

garciagu

There is no such Report options in Quicken for mac 2017 v 4.8.5

Reports only allows me to create new reports (Comparison Report, Summary Report, Transaction Report) or chose from the following reports provided in Quicken: Accounts Summary, Category Summary, Last Month, Net Worth Over Time, Payee Summary, Spending Cloud, Tax Schedule, This Month

jacobs

@garciagu Aha! So the key information you hadn't shared until now is that you're not using the current version of Quicken!

garciagu

"which really only needed a sentence vs several verbose paragraphs." I agree I was verbose. But only because this question has been asked many times and the threads get on tangents based on irrelevant questions people were asking and never answers the question. So I tried to put in as much context as I saw being asked in the other threads.

So the question remains: On Quicken 2017 for Mac (not Windows! this is a Quicken for Mac forum) how can you tell the performance of a Money Market Fund.

I don't want to have to log into my broker website to determine that if Quicken can do this.

but maybe Quicken for Mac just doesn't know how to do this... and maybe that is the correct answer.

Ps56k2

A couple different ways to dig down - with slightly different results...

EDIT ---- Sorry...
included info, directions, and screen shots from my WINDOWS not MAC system.

At top - click INVEST - then click on PORTFOLIO - (same as clicking on menu PORT)
Now you can CUSTOMIZE to see the Accounts, or just the Securities you want,
along with the metrics you want to view.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/8b/wgfxkrs83m06.jpg

Ps56k2

OOPS - got caught again - sorry.... this was from my WIN system - not Mac -

jacobs

garciagu said:

So the question remains: On Quicken 2017 for Mac (not Windows! this is a Quicken for Mac forum) how can you tell the performance of a Money Market Fund.

but maybe Quicken for Mac just doesn't know how to do this... and maybe that is the correct answer.

Again, now that we know you're using Quicken Mac 2017 (which you hadn't indicated originally), I did answer the question above: performance reporting functionality in Quicken Mac was added with the release of Quicken 2018 two years ago. Maybe that gives you a reason to want to upgrade, maybe not -- but that's the answer.

garciagu

"I did answer the question above: performance reporting functionality in Quicken Mac was added with the release of Quicken 2018 two years ago. Maybe that gives you a reason to want to upgrade, maybe not -- but that's the answer."

Yes you did and I will flag it as such. Thank you all for your replies.

So in summary if you, like me, were an early adopter of Quicken 2017 and want to get your money's worth and use it until its license expire you have to forgo performance reporting until you are ready to upgrade to a yearly subscription of Quicken 2018 or 2019. Got it! again thank you all for your time.

jacobs

garciagu said:

So in summary if you, like me, were an early adopter of Quicken 2017 and want to get your money's worth and use it until its license expire you have to forgo performance reporting until you are ready to upgrade to a yearly subscription of Quicken 2018 or 2019. Got it! again thank you all for your time.

I think this illustrates one of the things the company was trying to address by moving to the subscription model: when improvements are created, everyone gets them right away, instead of the old method of users waiting three years before upgrading. If you took cost out of the equation, we'd all agree that continual improvements beats every third year. Unfortunately, they clouded the picture by making the cost per year higher, so some users look at the change negatively.

NotACPA

Simply put: If you want the newer features, you must pay for the newer features.

garciagu

Agree. I'd be happy if the existing features would work though. I'm most unhappy with the sync to the point I often ask myself why am I waiting for the license to expire. I have to update my securities manually anyway! Quicken does a horrible job updating my portfolio, it misses days, it often puts the right quote in the wrong day.. jeez!

I'm going to take the opportunity to explore alternatives, like when I moved from Microsoft Money to Quicken. I was happy with Quicken under Intuit. I'm considering Banktivity, GnuCash and Quicken 2019.