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Investing--Portfolio--Year to Date Returns a Joke!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gary R

I have five accounts with Fidelity. The Year to date returns as of 8/31/20 from Fidelity actually agree with the Investment Performance in Quicken in the reports section for each account.
However, If I go to the Investment tab--Portfolio---and select Year to Date Returns from the drop down menu the returns are completely off the wall and make no sense. They are thousands of dollars off. I even tried selecting closed positions and then open---Made no difference. I guess I should be happy that the reports give me the correct Year to date returns, but still confused whey there is such a huge difference when selecting my other view.

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Jim_Harman

What is the exact name of the column you are looking at in the portfolio view?

I would ignore the Avg Annual Return (%) YTD because it is annualized and thus may overstate gains or losses for periods of less than one year.

Gary R

Return Year to Date--

Gary R

The investment report is accurate and agrees with Fidelity Year to date numbers.

Gary R

Portfolio view is just really screwed up and the folks at Quicken should try and find a way to fix these issues.

Jim_Harman

You need to be more specific then "really screwed up" if you want help.

Which investment report agrees with Fidelity?

Start by looking carefully at the definitions of the columns in the Portfolio views.

q_lurker

Gary R said:

Return Year to Date--

Are you looking at that column for the Account level or the security level?
How is your view grouped? Account, Security, Security type, other, ...?
Is the view customized to a limited group of accounts or securities?
Are some of the securities held in multiple accounts (if grouped by security)?

Return YTD should be considering dividends, interest, sales (realized gains/losses), etc. for this year and change in value from 12/31/2019 to today (most recent price) of current holdings.

I have generally found that info to be accurately presented, but there are nuances that can throw wrenches into the calculation.

Gary R

It doesn't matter what column----the numbers are all the same
I checked off all five Fidelity accounts and selected all hidden securities.

UKR

Also please consider this:
Do you own stocks which recently have undergone a Stock Split?
Depending on how the stock splits were recorded, correctly with a Stock Split transaction or incorrectly with downloaded Remove/Add Shares transactions, your results may now be off.

Gary R

The Return Year to Date numbers are correct when I go to Investment Performance--It shows Investments and Returns--The difference between the two numbers is Return. Apple did have a split but my Investment performance is correct.

Gary R

I figured it out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll use one Fidelity account and Return Year to Date shows negative 2294
However the bottom of the page shows totals of Negative 900.
The reason there is a difference is because the Top line does not include any sales of stocks or funds purchased before 1/1/2020. The total number on the bottom of the page includes everything. I never noticed this before.

q_lurker

Gary R said:

I figured it out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'll use one Fidelity account and Return Year to Date shows negative 2294
However the bottom of the page shows totals of Negative 900.
The reason there is a difference is because the Top line does not include any sales of stocks or funds purchased before 1/1/2020. The total number on the bottom of the page includes everything. I never noticed this before.

I don't follow. Are you saying "the Top line does not include any 2020 sales of stocks or funds purchased before 1/1/2020"?

OK. Looking in detail at one security in one account that I have sold partially this year, I too see the sale income omitted from the Return YTD figure (my math mistake). (Neither gain/loss nor gross sale proceeds nor any other value seems to be included in the Return YTD dollars.) But I do see agreement between the account level total (top line) and the bottom of screen (all included accounts) total. That is (apparently) inconsistent with your results.

The omission of the "sale income" from the Return YTD value is contrary to the definition of Return YTD -- "Market value plus cash income plus sale income minus dollars invested for the year to date." (Again, my math mistake)

The "sale income" should be the difference between the beginning of year value and the "sold for" value. Example: I sold 900 shares that at beginning of year were valued at 10.55/share. The sale price was $10.73/share. My sale income would amount to $0.18/share * 900 shares = $162. Sale income for shares bought during the year would be price sold for less price paid. There are probably more rigorous calculations appropriate, but the gist of my point is that the beginning of year value already included unrealized gains/losses. A portion of those unrealized gains were converted to realized gains at time of sale. That portion of the full gain/loss for the sold shares would not be included in the Return YTD figure. "Sale income" is neither gain/loss on the sale nor total proceeds of the sale.

(Edit: I later found problems with my math. I am not now seeing errors in the calculation for Return-YTD on an individual security line. Comments above stricken where appropriate.)

Gary R

q_lurker--I realize that you are just trying to help me, but you have just confused me more and have no idea what you're saying.
I wish I knew how to send a screen shot of the register but no clue
I know what Return Year to Date means

I probably have 40-50 stocks and mutual funds in one Fidelity account. Over half were bought and sold this year. The first line for the Fidelity account shows one amount. You would think it is the total Return Year to Date. However, at the bottom of the page is a total and that amount is completely different.
That's when I realized after doing some research and just taking the returns year to date of securities held the entire year that the top number didn't include those numbers.
That's why I said that I figured it out---I did
The bottom line now agrees with my on Line Fidelity performance numbers and also agrees with the Quicken Investment Performance reports.

Moral of the story---If you select Return Year to Date you need to look at the bottom of the page total and not the top numbers. Easy Peasy---

q_lurker

I understand the numbers you are referring to. Top line is really a subtotal based on whatever 'Group by' has been selected. There may be several top lines. Bottom line is the total for everything included in that portfolio view customization - securities, accounts, security types, etc.

After putting together a long explanation, I scrapped that approach jumping to the bottom line (I hope).

What you are seeing is the result of Quicken's current decision to put NA in the Return field when the security was not owned at the beginning of the period. Those NAs can appear in Return-YTD, 1-yr, 3-yr, or 5-yr. If you did not own shares at the beginning of that relevant period, NA goes in the Return column. Quicken does this even though it can (and does) compute the change in the market value from time of purchase to 'today' (As of date).

The second aspect is grouping. If your view is Grouped by Account, then the NAs are treated as 0 (or blank) and not included in the account subtotal. If your view is Grouped by something else (like security type), as noted the security line will show NA, but a real value will be computed and used in the summation for each subgroup (stock, mutual fund, bond, etc. for security type grouping). That difference in approach is just odd. The result is that Grouped by Account, the sum of the subtotals (top lines) may not match the bottom line. Group by (something else) and the top line subtotal are not the sum of the numbers below it.

Anyone recall if we have an "Idea" to correct NAs for Return-$ columns. (I know there are some for other portfolio view columns.)

Note that I will be editing my prior comment above to correct some misstatements I made therein.

Gary R

I'll wrap it up here!!!!!!
It makes no difference how you group your portfolio
Bottom line totals will always be the same-----Return Year to Date will be correct even though you may have lots of N/A amounts next to each security.

Only look at the Bottom line totals for your Year to Date Returns. Also these will agree with the Investment performance reports in Quicken and also the Brokerage on line statements.

Gary R

BTW---I would be happy to post a copy of my investment register showing the numbers if someone could tell me how to do this.
I know you can't copy and paste the register, but maybe there is another way to accomplish this.

q_lurker

@Gary R : You can grab a pic of part of your screen using Windows Snip or Snip&Sketch app.

BUT

You can't post a pic on this site until you have at least 51 points. You currently have 24. (ref: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7849424/introducing-community-ranks#latest). I believe that policy is to reduce and discourage spammers. You can post a link to another site that has your pic.