Strange security shares math.

Chris_QPW

I was looking at the the Asset Allocation report, the one that comes up when you click on the Allocations chart in on the Investing tab and see some strange math.

Either Quicken is rounding to the round digit or maybe it is already running into rounding errors from exceeding what a double variable can hold precision wise.  I suspect it is the former.

We start with a security that show up as not being completely sold because of the change where they are now using up to 6 digits past the decimal point.


So the math says that I should sell .000017 more shares to clear out this security.   Double clicking on the line above brings up the transaction list and I go to the last transaction (a sell).

The transaction sells 5617.5164 shares.
By the math 5617.5164 + .000017 = 5617.516417 (selling 5617.516417 shares should zero it).

Double clicking on the transaction the transaction:

Changing the number of shares:

Checking the transaction report:

Going back to the allocation report:


As you can see the last two digits of the shares didn't affect the number of shares in the allocation report correctly.

In fact watch what happens if I change to selling 5617.5165, which should be way to much.


Working my way up, it isn't until 5617.5170 do I crossover and get:


And dropping back to 5617.5169 I get:


So basically it is impossible for me to zero out this position.

Note if I select sell all shares it will select the amount of 5,617.517.

Rocket J Squirrel

Does a Remove Shares transaction have better luck?

Sherlock

We have the same issue on multiple old holdings.  Our work around is to exclude the securities from the report.

Chris_QPW

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Does a Remove Shares transaction have better luck?

No, not really.  It seemed to work for one where was down to .000001 shares, but then didn't work right for one with .000005 shares.

mnml0

In a similar vein, I've recently discovered several issues that were sold ca. 2012 that have regained values of $0.01~$0.04 via an Asset Allocation graph/report - even though no shares remain in any accounts. While my memory isn't what it was back then, I do recall fiddling with (probably) those transactions in a similar fashion when entering the sells in order to dispose of all shares. And I've always used six decimal places, fwiw.