Unit prices not equal to NAV

Catherine Shenoy

I have a retirement account that uses "units," not shares for the mutual funds I hold. The downloaded prices in Quicken don't match the unit prices on my statement.

Here is what the company says about the unit values:

" The unit value ("UV") of the funds within our products will not precisely match the net asset value (“NAV”) of the corresponding underlying mutual fund for two primary reasons - First, at the fund's inception (within the program), we may have assigned the initial UV at a price different than the NAV of the corresponding underlying mutual fund. Note that regardless of how the fund's initial UV was priced within the program, the participant owns units, not shares so if the UV is lower than the NAV, they would receive more units than they would have received in shares had they purchased an identical amount in the actual underlying fund (and vice versa if the UV was higher than the NAV). The second reason the UV will not match the NAV is the fees/expenses associated with the program. The unit values within the program, on a daily basis, pass through the underlying fund’s performance, less the asset based fee associated with the program. In other words, although the UV for the funds won’t match the underlying fund’s NAV, the only difference in the daily percentage change of the two will be the daily asset based fee associated with the program on the UV."

Here's an example, on June 30 VFIAX, Vanguard 500 Index Fund Admiral Shares were $396.66 (share price) vs $393.464 (unit price). I enter units, not shares since I own units. Perhaps, I should have been entering shares. Then Quicken would multiply the NAV price times the shares. It would be a pain to go back an correct for the last couple of years

I want to be able to track performance correctly over time, so I need to figure out how to do this correctly. Maybe I need a monthly correction?

Mark1104

given what you provided from the disclosure, you should be multiplying units by unit value ("UV"). 

 Multiplying units by NAV is not correct 

Jim_Harman

If you own units and not shares of the corresponding mutual fund, you should edit the security details and delete the security's symbol so it is blank. This will prevent Quicken's quote provider from downloading the mutual fund NAVs. To avoid confusion, you should also give the security a distinct name like Vanguard 500 units.

The unit prices should be downloaded by the Financial Institution when you connect to download transactions.

If the unit prices are significantly different from the fund share prices, you will have to edit the price history to delete the incorrect values.

Post back for more info if you also own the publicly traded VFIAX, because then you will need 2 separate securities if Quicken.

Sherlock

I suggest you uncheck the Download Quotes box for the security on the Security List window: press Ctrl + Y
To avoid further confusion, I also suggest you clear the ticker symbol for the security: right-click on the security and select Edit

Quicken should import the correct price from the financial institution.

If you haven't already, you may want to review: https://www.quicken.com/support/how-update-security-prices

Catherine Shenoy

Thank you all. I have some work to do. A couple of the "securities" are duplicates of a "real" security in another account.
This financial institution doesn't have a Quicken download, but I can download transactions. I change the tickers to something else. Probably just the same ticker with a .SB or something similar. Then I will edit the price history. Also will turn off the auto update for these prices.

Catherine Shenoy

Any ideas on updating unit prices easily. it's not a ton of securities, nor too long a time period. Still I'd like to do it most efficiently. Thanks

Sherlock

Catherine Shenoy said:

Any ideas on updating unit prices easily. it's not a ton of securities, nor too long a time period. Still I'd like to do it most efficiently. Thanks

You may want to consider updating the prices by importing a CSV file.

Jim_Harman

If you are manually updating a series of prices for the same security, go to the security detail page, click on more, then update the price history.

If you are updating the prices for several securities for the same date, you can set the date in a Portfolio view or the account's Holdings view and change them there.

If the security is not publicly traded, make sure the Download Quotes box is unchecked in the security list and the ticker symbol is blank or something unique, so the quote provider will not try to download prices for some other security.