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Downloading portfolio, multiple funds show up as NULL

guppy_puppy

I've linked to my prudential 401K. Works fine. On first download, quicken correctly created a security entry for each fund (about a dozen). For three funds however, they all show up as having the same price. If I change the price for one of those three, it changes for the other two. I noticed that they all have NULL as the ticker symbol. How can I fix this?

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guppy_puppy

Here's the solution that Customer Support gave, that seems to work: After the first download, quicken set up the securities for the prudential account, assigning NULL as the ticker, since that is what prudential sent. That in turn created a price history for each. Changing the ticker symbol from NULL to something else made a unique price history for each of the NULL accounts, but disconnected them from prudential.

Solution: Delete the price history.

Quicken now defaults to use the price from prudential rather than from the history. It does mean there is no history for these three NULL accounts, but they are updated. Note that I updated on-step-update to NOT try to update the fake symbols I made so that I don't continue to get errors.

All comments

q_lurker

Each security in Quicken needs to have a unique ticker symbol or none at all. I suggest you make up your own symbols for those those three.

Jim_Harman

Are these publicly traded securities or are they special funds for your 401k for example?

If publicly traded, you can enter the correct Tickers in the security details.

NotACPA

Watch out though, as 401k securities with the exact same name as a real fund might NOT be the real fund. It would have a different NAV and be denominated in Units instead of Shares.

guppy_puppy

So I guess if I make up my own "Symbol", it will not update the rates? I called Prudential, and they say these are "funds of funds", so I guess in answer to the question as to whether these are publicly traded, they are not. What is a NAV?

Jim_Harman

NAV is Net Asset Value. That is the share price that is reported by mutual funds.

If you make the symbol blank Quicken will not attempt to download a price and you should be able to set each fund's price separately. If you want to make up symbols, they should all be different and not match any real securities.

Did you enter the symbol NULL, or was that downloaded from Prudential when you set up the account?

guppy_puppy

I don't know if they sent NULL or if Quicken inserted it.

Jim_Harman

OK, regardless of how it got there, you should definitely not end up with different securities sharing the same symbol because as you have seen Quicken uses the symbol to track the price history.

If you want to get to the bottom of this issue and potentially get it fixed so it will not affect other users, you might contact Quicken Support and get them to review your OFX log, which shows what Prudential sent.

If you want to explore on your own (not for the faint hearted) you can go to Help > Log files and download your OFX log. You can search this file with a text editor like Notepad and see if you can find NULL with the names of your securities nearby.

Please share what you find!

q_lurker

guppy_puppy said:

So I guess if I make up my own "Symbol", it will not update the rates? I called Prudential, and they say these are "funds of funds", so I guess in answer to the question as to whether these are publicly traded, they are not. What is a NAV?

There are two ways (relevant to this discussion) that Quicken updates prices -- 1) via Quicken's servers based on ticker symbols, and 2) from downloads from the financial institution (Prudential) based on their identification of a security being matched to a Quicken security in your data. Since these "funds of funds" are not publicly traded, source 1 is not in play, but your made up ticker does need to be unique from all publicly traded securities. Since this source is out of play, in the security list (Ctrl-Y), the option to Download Quotes should not be checked for these three.

For source 2 to be in play, you need to confirm that for each of these three securities, the box "Matched with online security" is checked. If it is not checked for one or more, I would go to Tools / Online Center / FI = Prudential / Holdings tab / Compare to Portfolio. You'll then get the opportunity to match them up. (I might even go so far as to uncheck that "Matched..." box and reset the matchups.)

With source 2 in play, when you download transactions from Prudential, those should come with updated prices for these three "funds of funds", (and also other more pure funds you own through them with traded symbols).

I have never heard of Quicken inserting NULL as a ticker on its own.

q_lurker

I meant to add: I prefer that securities have symbols rather than blanks because there exists a program to cull out of your Quicken data the price history of individual securities based on ticker symbol. That program does not process correctly for multiple securities with blanks for ticker symbols. That makes it my personal choice in that regard.

For uniqueness in ticker symbols, I tend to include symbols with alphanumerics, like "XYZ 5% (2022)". I am pretty sure the marketplace will never adopt that level of nomenclature in my lifetime.

guppy_puppy

Interesting. I changed the name of the three via account/holdings/edit security detail/Symbol. When I go in through the TOOLS path, they still show as NULL. In the COMPARE TO PORTFOLIO method, there is one showing as "Unidentified Security" and the number of shares on that don't match anything in my portfolio

guppy_puppy

I am sufficiently nerdy to look at the OGX file. :-) Prudential is sending NULL for the three funds.

<SECNAME>*(Masked)* STOCK<TICKER>NULL<UNITPRICE>0131.60860900

How does that affect prices or data in Quicken

q_lurker

From an old OFX log file of mine, this is the way Vanguard sent (sends) data
An Investments Positions section:
<INVPOSLIST><POSMF><INVPOS>
<SECID><UNIQUEID>922908728<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><HELDINACCT>OTHER
<POSTYPE>LONG
<UNITS>xxxx.xxx
<UNITPRICE>47.72
<MKTVAL>xxxxx.xx
<DTPRICEASOF>20160224160000.000[-5:EST]
<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price
</INVPOS>
<REINVDIV>Y<REINVCG>Y
</POSMF>
</INVPOSLIST>

Later in file, info about the various funds.

<MFINFO><SECINFO>
<SECID><UNIQUEID>922908728<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund Admiral Shares
<TICKER>VTSAX
<FIID>0585
<UNITPRICE>47.72
<MEMO>Price as of date based on closing price
</SECINFO>
<MFTYPE>OPENEND
</MFINFO>

It is in the Investment Positions area that Vanguard is telling Quicken that I had a long position of xxx.xxx shares of a fund with CUSIP 922908728 worth 47.72/share on 2/24/2016.

Later in the file, they associate CUSIP 922908728 with a security that has a name and a ticker and they repeat the price.

I believe it is the combination of those two sections that forms the premise for the Compare to Portfolio process.

YMMV

If you @guppy_puppy inserted a made-up ticker and then Quicken overrode your ticker with NULL because Prudential said it was NULL, I believe the program erred (did different than it used to). If the NULL replaced a blank ticker, maybe that is less of an error (I can't recall prior behavior, and maybe it makes sense to replace an empty field with a value). Regardless, Prudential should not IMO be sending the same ticker for different securities.

From my experience, the "Matched with Online Security" match-up uses the CUSIP for the matching and neither the security name nor ticker used in Quicken has to match what is reported by the financial institution. When faced with making a match, the program will attempt to use ticker and name comparisons in offering the user a possible match.

Could your Unidentified Security correlate in some manner to cash in your account?

guppy_puppy

The securities were created when I first downloaded from Prudential. It was subsequent that I replaced NULL with a different name for each of three problem children.

I just find it interesting that the COMPARE TO PORTFOLIO still shows them as NULL. I'm going to watch to see if the values get updated. That's the big thing I was looking for.

q_lurker

guppy_puppy said:

...
I just find it interesting that the COMPARE TO PORTFOLIO still shows them as NULL. I'm going to watch to see if the values get updated. That's the big thing I was looking for.

The Holdings tab (for Compare to Portfolio button) is showing the info as reported by the FI == Holdings at Prudential as of (date and time).

guppy_puppy

Ran the update today. I can confirm that the prices for the 3 were NOT updated. I looked at the OGX, and the prices are there. Is there way to force Quicken to use the prudential-provided costs rather?

UKR

If Prudential is sending an incorrect Ticker symbol, as shown when reviewing your OFX log file (not OGX), how is Quicken supposed to figure out which real security to use, from 3 different securities all using the same incorrect ticker?
Prudential needs to fix their download and provide a correct Ticker or maybe no ticker at all and a proper security name and CUSIP number.

I'm just puzzled that you appear to be the only one reporting this error.

If you haven't done so already, I'd say it's time to call Quicken Support on the phone and request help. Let them do a screen share session with you to review a download log file on your computer, to determine the nature of the problem and to figure out how to fix it.

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q_lurker

So the three "funds of funds" have unique tickers in Quicken now.
Are they also checked as "Matched with online security"?
Does the OFX log file include some form of the security identity? Like the
<SECID><UNIQUEID>922908728<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID>
from my file. The 'type' may or may not be CUSIP. I don't know the range of possibilities for that parameter.
Is that info truly unique (and not duplicated like the NULL ticker was duplicated)?

guppy_puppy

This seems to be the entry (I think I got it all),showing that there is a unique ID for these three TICKER=NULL

></SECINFO><MFTYPE>OPENEND</MFINFO><MFINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>P704187XV<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>GUARANTEED INCOME FUND<TICKER>NULL<UNITPRICE>0123.61624500<DTASOF>20191207120000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1.0000<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></SECINFO><MFTYPE>OPENEND</MFINFO><MFINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>P055000W1<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>SA/T. ROWE PRICE GROWTH STOCK<TICKER>NULL<UNITPRICE>0135.04332700<DTASOF>20191207120000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1.0000<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></SECINFO><MFTYPE>OPENEND</MFINFO><MFINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>P0030007D<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>DRYDEN S&P 500 INDEX FUND<TICKER>NULL<UNITPRICE>0080.25382900<DTASOF>20191207120000.000[-5:EST]<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1.0000<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></SECINFO><MFTYPE>OPENEND</MFINFO><MFINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>921937504<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>VANGUARD TOTAL BOND MARKET

q_lurker

guppy_puppy said:

This seems to be the entry (I think I got it all),showing that there is a unique ID for these three TICKER=NULL

></SECINFO><MFTYPE>OPENEND</MFINFO>

<MFINFO><SECINFO>
<SECID><UNIQUEID>P704187XV<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>GUARANTEED INCOME FUND
<TICKER>NULL
<UNITPRICE>0123.61624500
<DTASOF>20191207120000.000[-5:EST]
<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1.0000<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY>
</SECINFO>
<MFTYPE>OPENEND
</MFINFO>

<MFINFO><SECINFO>
<SECID><UNIQUEID>P055000W1<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID>
<SECNAME>SA/T. ROWE PRICE GROWTH STOCK
<TICKER>NULL
<UNITPRICE>0135.04332700
<DTASOF>20191207120000.000[-5:EST]
<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1.0000<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></SECINFO>
<MFTYPE>OPENEND
</MFINFO>

<MFINFO><SECINFO>
<SECID><UNIQUEID>P0030007D<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>DRYDEN S&P 500 INDEX FUND
<TICKER>NULL
<UNITPRICE>0080.25382900
<DTASOF>20191207120000.000[-5:EST]
<CURRENCY><CURRATE>1.0000<CURSYM>USD</CURRENCY></SECINFO>
<MFTYPE>OPENEND
</MFINFO>

<MFINFO><SECINFO><SECID><UNIQUEID>921937504<UNIQUEIDTYPE>CUSIP</SECID><SECNAME>VANGUARD TOTAL BOND MARKET

I agree that this shows unique security ids for the three funds and the common (problematic) NULL ticker albeit for December 7, 2019 prices.

So does your Security list and security details reflect that those CUSIPs apply to those securities? Do those security details reflect that the securities are matched to an online security (by definition with those CUSIPs)?

guppy_puppy

q_lurker

I am not sure if we are clear with each other or not (which must mean we are not clear?).

guppy_puppy said:

Here's the solution that Customer Support gave, that seems to work: After the first download, quicken set up the securities for the prudential account, assigning NULL as the ticker, since that is what prudential sent. That in turn created a price history for each.

If all three had the same ticker, they should have had the same price history record. That is what your opening post describes where changing price for one changes prices for all three. That does not describe not an individual price history for each.

Changing the ticker symbol from NULL to something else made a unique price history for each of the NULL accounts, ...

I agree. That was the intent such that each security would have its own price records.

but disconnected them from prudential.

I would expect so, but can't see into your past files.

Solution: Delete the price history.

Which "price history" or histories did you delete? Deleting the one associated with NULL makes sense (no such security actually exists). Deleting the other three may or may not make sense.

Quicken now defaults to use the price from prudential rather than from the history.

That is a confusing statement. The prices provided from prudential with each download for each of the three should be going into the price history records for each of the three. As you vary views and reports, the price history records are always what gets used.

It does mean there is no history for these three NULL accounts, but they are updated.

Can't imagine how that can be. (BTW, they would not be NULL accounts, they would be NULL securities.)

Note that I updated one-step-update to NOT try to update the fake symbols I made so that I don't continue to get errors.

Correct. Those with fake symbols should have "Download Quotes" unchecked.

So what is your 'current' setup for these three assuming all three are currently "Matched with online security".
Same tickers, different CUSIPS?
Different tickers, Different CUSIPS? (What I would think you would need or want)
Blank tickers, Different CUSPS?

Security 1 -- TICKER? -- CUSIP?
Security 2 -- TICKER? -- CUSIP?
Security 3 -- TICKER? -- CUSIP?