Spurious asset

Quercus47

I have an unexplained asset showing up on my asset report that I don't know how to get rid of. According to Quicken, I own 0.86 shares of Fidelity Cash at $1.00 per share and $0.00 of value. It has a cost basis of ($1.26) and a gain of $1.26 (see image). In reality, I got rid of all my shares of this asset back in 2015. Since then, there is one apparently erroneous entry on 1/2/2017 when I BoughtX 0.43 shares of Fidelity Cash from Uncategorized. Finally, the erroneous shares of Fidelity cash ONLY show up on an Asset Report, but do NOT show up in my portfolio.

The last time I did a deep dive and meticulously reconciled each and every asset, share and cost basis between my Quicken account and my brokerage's records (end-of-year 2019), this issue did not exist. So sometime in the past year, Quicken has done something to my investment history that is creating this spurious entry.

Everything I've tried to do to resolve this has resulted in a different problem. If I remove 0.86 shares, it STILL shows up in the asset report, and then shows up as -0.86 shares in my portfolio. If I delete the 2017 BoughtX transaction, I get -0.86 shares again.

What is going on and how do I fix this?

Jim_Harman

Because there is a * in the Est column, it appears that this issue is caused by a Placeholder in your Trust account for this security.

First, go to Edit > Preferences > Investment transactions and make sure the Show hidden transactions box is checked. This will make the Placeholders visible.

Then look for the Placeholder in your Trust account and resolve it.

Tom Young

@Jim_Harman

If I run the Asset Allocation report every single holding has an asterisk in that Est column and I know I don't have any Placeholders for any of my securities.  Quicken Help does state "Asterisks in your report indicate missing or incomplete data" but that may be referring to something to do with a Quicken.com portfolio, or lack thereof.

Quercus47

Show Hidden Transactions has always been checked and there are no placeholders for this or any transaction. Also, like T Young, every single entry on my asset report has this same asterisk, even things that I just bought last week and have nothing more than a single Buy transaction.

Jim_Harman

Sorry, I wrote without checking first. I have asterisks in the est column too.

The asterisk indicates that there is no quote for that security on the ending date of the report. Placeholders may also trigger the asterisk.

Quercus47

Thanks Jim.

Still looking for answers to original question - what to do about the spurious asset that shouldn't be there.

Jim_Harman

If you double click on the asset in the report, it should show the transactions that lead to the total. Does that reveal anything unusual?

Tom Young

The fact that your screen shot is showing a miscalculation of the unrealized gain suggests possible data corruption.

Have you tried File > File Operations > Copy... and then using the copied file

File > File Operations > Validate and Repair... with the box for rebuilding investment lots ticked?