Amount invested error

kashg

I had a Robinhood investment account that I closed early in 2020. I have had the investments transferred to TDA. However my Investing Register, under Robinhood shows $0 for Market Value, but the Amount Invested column shows the orginal $ that I had invested. These figures reflect in the totals and negatively impact my Amount Return.

Boatnmaniac

@kashg - I don't believe Amount Invested has anything to do with returns calculations.  It is simply the amount of dollars invested over time and it includes investment expenses in that calculation.  It is a cumulative thing so every time you add new funds to an investment account the Amount Invested goes up.  Selling shares and transferring the proceeds out of the account or closing the account does not reduce the Amount Invested in that account.   I have several closed investment accounts and they all still show the exact same thing you are seeing in your Robinhood account...$0 Market Share and the total Amount Invested in each account.

What is important in calculation of returns is Cost Basis.  Cost Basis is what your current holdings cost you and it disregards all the securities that you no longer hold.  Once an account is closed and it no longer holds any securities, the Cost Basis becomes $0.

Rocket J Squirrel

Boatnmaniac said:

@kashg - I don't believe Amount Invested has anything to do with returns calculations.  It is simply the amount of dollars invested over time and it includes investment expenses in that calculation.  It is a cumulative thing so every time you add new funds to an investment account the Amount Invested goes up.  Selling shares and transferring the proceeds out of the account or closing the account does not reduce the Amount Invested in that account.

I beg to differ on a couple of points.

Amount Invested does affect every investment statistic that begins with the word Return. And it should go to zero when number of shares held goes to zero.

This is from the Quicken Help, emphasis mine:

Amount invested is the actual dollar amount that you've invested in a security to date. Amount invested includes any expenses (such as commissions and fees) for that security. It does not include reinvested amounts, such as reinvested dividends, interest, or capital gains distributions.

...

When the Amount Invested changes, so do the calculations for Return and ROI (%), which are based on the amount invested.

Amount invested doesn't decrease when you sell shares (unless you sell all shares of a given security—then it goes to zero), whereas cost basis does. If calculations such as ROI appear lower than you would expect, it could be because the amount invested includes the cost of shares you no longer own.

So if you have sold or removed all shares of a security and still see a non-zero Amount Invested, you may actually not have 0.000 shares. Even a residual 0.001 share will prevent Amount Invested from zeroing out. So look for that and correct it if possible in the final Sell or Shares Out transaction for the security.

If you really, truly have zero shares and a non-zero Amount Invested, you may have data corruption and need to troubleshoot.

kashg

Thanks @Boatnmaniac and @Rocket J Squirrel . I tried out a test case with 2 investing accounts (ac1 and Ac2) and 3 positions in each. The amounts invested were Ac1 $1,450 and Ac2 $1,600 for a total of $3,050. I then moved 1 entire position $650 from Ac2 to Ac1. The amount invested in Ac1 now shows $2,100 (1450+650) but Ac2 still shows $1600. Now my amount invested has gone up to 3,700. The Gain/Loss% and Return numbers do not change. So it is only the amount invested that does.

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @kashg

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue. I had a few questions I wanted to ask to help isolate the issue further.

First, did you transfer the shares to another account or sell the shares?

Next, if you are seeing this discrepancy in the portfolio view, can you navigate to options and provide if you have the option to "Show Closed Lots.


 Does toggling this option on or off show a different result for the amount invested?

Please let us know what you find!

-Quicken Tyka