Duplicate Accounts and placeholder dates that predate purchase

Hen

In December I lost the ability to download from one of my TD Ameritrade accounts. None of the updates helped, nor did anything in this forum. Contacted TDA and they said I had to use by ID access code, instead of my Password.

When I tried to change that from the edit Account menu, it took me to the add new account screen and it would not accept the name TD Ameritrade, unless I clicked on it from the list of brokers. It the created a new account, which would connect, but nothing would download.

Yesterday, somewhere I found an unchecked box to download transactions and (holdings maybe?) I can't find that box now, but I checked it. Nothing happened yesterday but today I downloaded 1300+ transactions. The placeholder date is 03/25/2018, and all the placeholder stock transactions were from prior to that date. However some options transactions have a purchase date as recent as January this year.

Resolving placeholder dates with newer dates says you must enter a date before the placeholder date, then a window pops up and says placeholder share balance will not be affected, do you want to do this?

1) Do I want to do that about the date?
2) I have been manually entering transactions in the original account that stopped downloading. When I get the new account squared away, I'd like to get rid of the original account. What's the best way of doing that.

Quicken Francisco

Hello @Hen

 

Thank you for reaching out on the community and telling us about your issue although I apologize that you have not yet received a response. When it comes to downloading from investment brokers, Quicken will download the last 2 years of data generally. Any placeholders are from transactions prior to the oldest date in this case 3/25/2018. Currently are your holdings correct inside of quicken after accepting those prior transactions? If so then those placeholders would be correct and be from transactions prior to the 3/25/2018 date.  Another thing to note is placeholders do not need to be filled for the account to work properly so if you don't feel like you need the full history you can actually leave it be. 

Depending if you would like to delete the old account or maybe keep it around for some historical preservation if it does have older transactions there's two different things we can do.

If you would like to delete the account go up to tools -> Account list. In the account list find the account you would like to delete and click edit which should be close to the middle of the line. In the bottom left there will be a delete button. Once done the account will be deleted.

If you would like to save it but hide it go to tools -> Manage hidden accounts. Once here find the account and select each of the options you would like the account to hide from. 

I would also recommend  looking at our support article here for more info on placeholders.

Please let us know if this helps resolve the issue for you.

 

Thanks,

 

Quicken Francisco

Hen

Thank you for answering Francisco.

Before I get to the placeholder issue, Quicken is misbehaving with my short sales. I have a number of trades, that were short sale trades that have been closed, but are still showing as having 0 shares (which is correct) in both the holdings view and the investing portfolio view.

Placeholders DO NOT WORK THE WAY YOU CLAIM they are supposed to work with options. They just don't.

I have three options strikes that I day traded multiple times, two from 2019 and one this year that show up as placeholders prior to Mar 25, 2018. It won't let me enter the correct date, nor can I fudge the number of shares to make the placeholder share count go away. I get the message I don't have enough shares available.

I double checked my statements and none of the there contracts were traded by me prior to the placeholder date. Also the strike price of the options tell me that I wouldn't have been trading these options at that strike more than 2 years ago.

I am a long time Quicken user and was manually entering stock prices. Last October I started a new file where all my quotes were downloaded and maintained the two separate files until the end of 2019. However I started having download issues in late December. My original Quicken file was huge 75 MB and I have closed it out. The new file is 1/5 the size and I manually updated the transactions and have reconciled through last month. TD Ameritrade is not my only account so I am not willing to start over.

I suppose I can delete the 0 share short sale trades that clutter my screen and the placeholders but I will have to come up with a fudge factor to balance the account
(screen shot of the short trades which won't go away)