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Amount invested: account vs security

Ellary Kahan

I have an account that recently rolled all the money in one security into another security. I handled this in Quicken using Sold and Bought transactions. Now the amount invested for the account is higher by the amount that was rolled over at the time, i.e. the amount of the Bought transaction.
Should I have used a different transaction(s)?

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Rocket J Squirrel

Ellary Kahan said:

I have an account that recently rolled all the money in one security into another security.

What does "rolled" mean? What happened in your account in real life? Please be as specific as possible.

Ellary Kahan

It did exactly as I said. All the money from one security was transferred into another security. The company called it an exchange redemption followed by an exchange purchase. Its a college fund that is invested in age based securities. So when a boundary age is reached the entire value of one security is exchanged and bought into the next age ranged security.

Jim_Harman

Quicken's "Amount invested" in the Portfolio views s not the same as your total or net contributions to an account, or your cost basis. Amount invested is useful mainly as a component of other investment performance calculations.

For an extensive discussion of this topic, please search the in-product Help for "amount invested"

Ellary Kahan

So I used the correct transactions?

Rocket J Squirrel

Do you still own (or does Quicken think you own) any shares of the original security that was "rolled" into the new security? Perhaps in a different account?

Ellary Kahan

No, I don't.

Rocket J Squirrel

Then something is wrong. Your Amount Invested in the original security should have gone to $0.00 when your holding went to 0 shares. Therefore, you should not be seeing a doubled Amount Invested. First thing is to double-check to make sure Q doesn't have a rounding error and thinks you have even 0.001 shares.

In real life, was this truly a Sell followed by a Buy? The alternative would be a Shares Removed/Shares Added pair. Is this a taxable or tax-deferred account?

Ellary Kahan

No, it wasn't a sell/buy. The company called it an exchange redemption/exchange purchase. And the share balance did go to zero. The account is tax deferred.

Rocket J Squirrel

In a tax-deferred account, things are easier because gain/loss is irrelevant for now.

Make a copy of your data file, and replace the Sell/Buy with Shares Removed/Shares Added. Do preserve the total cost basis in the Added transaction for your own info. See whether that makes your Amount Invested look correct.

q_lurker

Jim_Harman said:

Quicken's "Amount invested" in the Portfolio views s not the same as your total or net contributions to an account, or your cost basis. Amount invested is useful mainly as a component of other investment performance calculations.

For an extensive discussion of this topic, please search the in-product Help for "amount invested"

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Then something is wrong. Your Amount Invested in the original security should have gone to $0.00 when your holding went to 0 shares.

Amount Invested with all its nuances has never been fully described and possibly is not uniformly handled. My latest Aha!

(AI = Amount Invested)

Owned 200 shares at beginning of year from an earlier purchase
-- Basis = AI = $6718
-- 12/31/20 value = $5752 = AI YTD
-- Only asset in account, therefore account level and security level values for AI and AI YTD agree

That all makes sense

Sell all 200 shares for $30/share = $6000; cash into account.

Portfolio view now shows only the cash line under the account
Cash has basis of $6000, but blanks for AI and AI YTD.
Account level shows AI and AI Ytd as $6000.

I can understand that, but it also seems a bit bogus -- doesn't add up, literally.

Continuing on, change the portfolio view to show closed lots.
The security with 0 shares, 0 basis, 0 market value appears as a line item
Cash with $6000 basis and market value appears as a second line item.

The security line for the 0 share holding shows AI = 6718 and AI YTD = 5752.
Those values get added to the not-shown 6000 cash values for the account level totals of 12,718 and 11,752. That means the account level AI and AI YTD depend on whether closed lots are showing. Not exactly obvious.

Now I buy another 200 shares of the same security for $5800.
For the security - AI = 12,518, AI YTD = 11,552. Those are the original values (the now closed lot 6718 and 5752) + the new $5800 addition.
There is now $200 cash still in the account, so the account level totals are 200 higher than the security level values. At this point, the account level values do NOT change as closed lots are included/excluded.

Another variation - buying a different security for the $5800 - behaves more like the all cash setup. AI and AI YTD are both at 6000, as 5800 from the new security and the 200 cash contribution. And like the cash situation, toggling the Show closed positions varies the Account level AI values.

Three points

While the Help info is helpful and better than a few years ago, it does not tell all.
While the Amount Invested goes to 0 when we sell all the shares, it is not as if the next holding of that security starts from 0.
All in all, Amount Invested is not always what is seems to be.

As such (IMO), Amount Invested should always be examined and considered closely when making any use of it.

Whether any of this helps @Ellary Kahan make sense of his Amount Invested values -- who knows.

Ellary Kahan

It shows me that AI at the account level can't be trusted to be accurate.

@Ellary Kahan , I would like to test my understanding:

Let's say the fund in question's value was $1000 and the total 529 Acc value was $5000. And they exchanged Fund11-12 > Fund13-14

Are you saying your total 529 Acc value is now $6000 (instead of $5000)?

Please check for any double entry by mistake. Check for +/- signs as well. Also make sure the details of what you entered in Quicken as sold and bought match that of your financial institution, meaning # of shares, price paid, and price received - since each is probably different for the respective funds (i.e. you sold 10 shares of Fund11-12 @ $X and bought 8 shares of Fund13-14 @ $Y). But the Total Sale figure (in the transaction details of the fund sold) and the Total Cost figure (in the transaction details of the fund bought) should be an exact match - of $1000 in this example. Finally from your account, go to the Holdings view and compare every one against your financial institution to pin point the issue.

FYI, looking at my 529 which the data was downloaded from the financial institution (not manually entered by me), the same exact transactions you are referring to, were downloaded as Sold and Bought, so your approach seems correct.

Jim_Harman

@q_lurker , we had an extensive discussion of account level Amount invested in this discussion
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20048358

As far as I know, nothing has changed since then, it is still not useful at the account level.

q_lurker

Jim_Harman said:

@q_lurker , we had an extensive discussion of account level Amount invested in this discussion
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20048358

As far as I know, nothing has changed since then, it is still not useful at the account level.

Yes, we as a user base do seem to keep rehashing several of the same issues, don't we? You linked back to a discussion 1 year ago that linked back to a similar discussion 8 years before that. I further agree, nothing has changed.

rleifield

How do you edit the Amount Invested to change it to the correct amount that you invested?

q_lurker

rleifield said:

How do you edit the Amount Invested to change it to the correct amount that you invested?

@rleifield. Not meaning to be flippant, the short answer to your question is — You don’t.

There is no provision to edit the Amount Invested field. Further, that value can vary depending on the starting date you choose, so it is not a singular value.

Jim_Harman

@rleifield,

To expand on @q-lurker's comment, the Amount Invested cannot be edited. Despite its name, Quicken's "Amount invested" in the Portfolio views is not the same as your total or net contributions to an account, or your cost basis. "Amount invested" is a calculated value and it is useful mainly as a component of other investment performance calculations.