Large Number of Stocks - contain 1,500 stocks, emulating the S&P 1500

Ross Payne

I just opened a new investment account. Long story short, it will soon contain 1,500 stocks, emulating the S&P 1500. Right now, just cash. I'm concerned that this many securities will bloat my already large file (42 MB) and slow things down. One alternative would be for me to start an entirely new Quicken file for just this account, notwithstanding the inconvenience. I do want complete investment tracking. Anyone had experience with this? I am aware that Quicken can handle up to 2,000 stocks: https://www.quicken.com/support/size-or-capacity-limitations-quicken-data-file#:~:text=Trackable stocks - Up to 2,000,that is larger than 99,999,999.99. Thank you.

Jim_Harman

If you add or remove money from this account, will that result in 1,500 trades? Will the dividends paid on each stock be recorded separately? That would be a huge number of transactions.

Why not just buy SPTM and have State Street do all the recordkeeping for 3 basis points?

Mark1104

and if you go this route, are you going to receive 1500 sets of annual reports and other documents in the mail.... you may need a larger mailbox!!!!

On $1mm, 3 b.p. is $300.  The time and effort to track all this in Quicken, reconcile it to your broker statements and submit tax returns (think capital gains which the ETF is likely to avoid) will easily exceed $300 per year.

ps after 27 years, my Quicken file has 67,000 transactions and 257mg, so that part may not be a problem.

Ross Payne

Thanks for your reply. Adding money would result in a lot of trades, perhaps 1,500. Every transaction will be recorded: dividends, splits, buys, sells. Why not buy the index fund? Good question. I'm using a company that manages the portfolio for a very low fee and it allows for the harvesting of losses that can't be done with an index fund.

Jim_Harman

If it were me I would not try to track all the individual trades. I would create a bogus security with a share price of $1.00 and an asset allocation to match the index. 

Buy and sell shares as you add or withdraw from the account. When dividends are paid, reinvest them at 1.00 or take as cash as appropriate. Add or Remove shares as the market value changes.

Or use Quicken's new Simple Investing mode for that account.

Ross Payne

Jim, the simple tracking method is a great idea. For tax purposes I rely on a 1099 from the broker for gains and losses rather that Quicken reporting.

Mark1104

@Jim_Harman - the benefit  of being able to harvest losses may be fools gold; you will have to pay capital gains tax on gains, net of losses, in any event.  ..... with most ETF's there are few, if any distribution of long term capital gains (which is net of losses  in any event). 

Reporting the gains in not avoidable with 1500 indiviudal stocks, but it is avoidable with an ETF representing the same 1500 stocks  

Rebalancing the 1500 individual stocks will create gains (and some will certainly be short term gains) while the ETF will not; this is one of the reasons the ETF industry has grown and the noition of buying the underlying stocks individually has not. 

just my two cents. 

Chris_QPW

I'm going to just state one thing about Quicken investment account performance.  Even if you put this account in another data file Quicken's performance would quickly turn really bad.  It was never designed for this number of securities.  "Handle up to 2000 securities" is stated as a "max".  Which in fact no one knows what that max is, but long before that the performance will go down to the point where it will take seconds to minutes for every transaction entry.

q_lurker

1. In my experience, the program can bog down for any account with somewhere between 8-12K transactions. Breaking point defined by computer and user expectations. For 1500 securities, I think you’d reach that point pretty quickly. 

2. The 2000 security limit is generally seen as a soft limit. No one has ever defined the “trackable” term applied in that specification. Some users have blown past that number with no known I’ll effects. 

I’d stay away from the detailed tracking. 

Ps56k2

Ross Payne said:  Adding money would result in a lot of trades, perhaps 1,500. Every transaction will be recorded: dividends, splits, buys, sells. Why not buy the index fund? Good question. I'm using a company that manages the portfolio for a very low fee and it allows for the harvesting of losses that can't be done with an index fund.

ok... at first I thought it was some kind of academic study.... guess not.

Are you actually buying 1,500 stocks ? How many shares of each - or is this Fractional shares....

You might consider this type of financial discussion over on - http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

Jim_Harman

And out of curiosity, does the broker's statement and/or download actually show all the transactions, or is it aggregated or summarized in some way?

Ross Payne

Jim, I don't know that yet. Presumably each transaction though.

Tom Young

Who's the broker?  Is this some sort of "in house" product?

Ross Payne

The account itself is held by TD Ameritrade, the investment advisor is a firm called Advisor Partners. Another company called parametric does something similar.

Ps56k2

Ross Payne said:

The account itself is held by TD Ameritrade, the investment advisor is a firm called Advisor Partners. Another company called parametric does something similar.

In reality - I suspect you are not actually buy/sell 1,500 different stocks -

but rather you are buying shares of a portfolio offering created by Advisor Partners that tracks the SP 1500....

The S&P 1500, or S&P Composite 1500 Index, is a stock market index of US stocks made by Standard & Poor's.
It includes all stocks in the S&P 500, S&P 400, and S&P 600. This index covers approximately 90% of the market capitalization of U.S. stocks.

https://www.advisorpartners.com/

Mark1104

Ross Payne - fascinating as the fact sheet states a 10 year return of 13.15% (pre tax but after the 60 b.p. of fees the advisor charges)... After tax, the return is stated as 14.09%. And read the discloures on the bottom of the fact sheet closely.  

as a compare the Vanguard S&P 500 (VOO) return over 10 years was 14.80 (pre tax but after the THREE BASIS POINT fee); I suspect the after tax return is about the same because there are typically NO capital gains distributions. 

How does one get a better return by losing money???????? doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 

Buyer Beware! 

Ps56k2

yup ....

https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B00591WK5S

or you can discuss it over on the Bogleheads forum - John Bogle created Vanguard -

http://www.bogleheads.org/forum/index.php

Ps56k2

Ross Payne said:  

The account itself is held by TD Ameritrade, the investment advisor is a firm called Advisor Partners. 

Just thought I would make sure that this is the group we are talking about 

https://www.advisorpartners.com/

Mark1104

@Ps56k2 - agreed - and that is where I found the 10 yr return info

https://www.advisorpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/ATI_factsheet_LargeCap_2021Q1-1.pdf