Quicken Mac upgrade to v6.3.0 changes asset classes -- and no longer remembers changes

Mike H

After upgrading to v6.3.0, I noticed that asset class for many of my securities had changed (most were changed to "Mixed/Multiple" from whatever asset classes I had originally assigned -- Large Cap Stocks, Small Cap Stocks, International Stocks, Domestic Bonds, Money Market, etc.). I tried manually changing each one back, which worked until I quit Quicken; when I re-opened the same data file, asset classes had gone back to "Mixed/Multiple".

[Would also like to add my vote to add customizable Asset Classes for future versions of Quicken!]

jacobs

@Mike H Yes, this is a problem! My Portfolio view viewed by asset allocation shows I have nearly 75% of my investments in the "Asset Mixture" class -- which makes viewing by Asset Class pretty much useless.

Quicken is using a calculated/derived makeup of "mixed" asset class -- using third-party data for all "asset mix" securities to break them down proportionally into their proper asset class categories -- for the new Dashboard card which shows asset allocation. That's a good thing, I believe.

The problem is that it is not using the same data & calculations for the Portfolio view. Since the Portfolio view is the only one which can be printed or exported, and is the only way to look at holdings on a date other than today, it seems imperative for them to change the Portfolio view's asset class calculations to mirror the "real world" asset class breakdown shown in the new Dashboard.

I posted about this in the thread about the release of version 6.3, but there has been no response from Marcus (who is the product manager for Quicken Mac). So it's not clear if this is an oversight by the developers, something they have planned for the future, or something they don't yet understand is problematic. It might be helpful for you to add a post of your own in that thread -- you can basically copy and paste what you wrote above -- in the hope he will see it. (He typically reads and responds to such threads in the week or so after a new release, but then stops, so we never know what he does and doesn't read and process.) There are several acknowledged bugs in the 6.3 release, and they paused a full rollout of this release to all users as they presumably work on a 6.3.1 update to be released in the near future. 

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P.S. As for adding customizable asset classes, I'll say that I used to think this was a major need for Quicken Mac, but now I'm not so sure. If Quicken will be using the asset class data derived from the underlying makeup of each mutual fund and EFT, then allowing users to create their own asset classes won't be able to be mapped to what it pulled in from their third-party download supplier.

I now think that asset classes should probably be kept to the classes their data provider uses, but that they should also add sector allocation. When you click on a security in Quicken and go to Security Overview, Quicken downloads a web page about the security from investing.quicken.com which has data provided by Morningstar (and perhaps other sources; the pages don't disclose the source of all the data). The two key breakdowns are asset allocation and sector allocation:



I think if Quicken users could view their investments by asset class and by sector class, it would give us the tools users desire in order to build the diverse portfolio of investments we choose. (But Quicken Windows apparently doesn't have sector allocation, so this is perhaps a pipe dream.)


That said, I also don't understand the presence or absence of some asset categories. For instance, stocks are classified as large-cap, small-cap or international. But what about mid-cap stocks? The fund shown above, Vanguard Extended Market Fund, is primarily a mid-cap and small-cap fund. On the Quicken investing page, it shows the Morningstar market cap allocation lists this as mid-cap: 




But Quicken Mac doesn't have a mid-cap stock asset class. But I hold this and a couple other funds which Morningstar classifies as mid-cap funds. So how is Quicken allocating the money in these holdings in its new asset allocations? 

Mike H

> @jacobs said:
> P.S. As for adding customizable asset classes, I'll say that I used to think this was a major need for Quicken Mac, but now I'm not so sure. If Quicken will be using the asset class data derived from the underlying makeup of each mutual fund and EFT, then allowing users to create their own asset classes won't be able to be mapped to what it pulled in from their third-party download supplier.
>
>

Yes, I think we are on the same page: it would be ideal if we could view our portfolio by overall sector class, especially if drawn from an accurate (or at least de facto "standard") source such as Morningstar. (It would be nice to know WHICH third-party source is being used for this data as well...).

Years ago, I seem to recall that Quicken Mac used to link to a web page to which it would sync your investment portfolio data from Quicken -- you could then view (on this portfolio web page) your up-to-date holdings broken down by sector allocation, with both an overall pie graph display as well as a table showing total values by sector in both aggregated dollars and percentages.

At some point (again, years ago), Intuit discontinued this service and the link between investment data held locally in Quicken data and investment data on that Intuit web page no longer worked.

At that point I began using the Asset Class field in Quicken Mac's setup screen for each security as a proxy for sector allocation. It was far from perfect -- as you mention, it didn't reflect the reality that funds often were a combination of large, small, mid, international, etc., and certain sector categories were not available at all (no such thing as "Mid Cap" -- really?). But, it was better than nothing to at least approximate my overall portfolio diversification...

My more recent complaint is that even Quicken Mac limited sector classes ("Asset Classes") aren't being remembered properly in the latest v6.3 release. (Not in v6.3.1 either.) The asset class of many of the securities I own were changed to "Mixed/Multiple" in the update to v6.3; then after I painstakingly manually changed the asset class of each security back to what they had been prior to the v6.3 update, I found that all my changes had NOT been saved when I opened Quicken the next time.

I did this again after the recent v6.3.1 update: I again manually changed the asset class of so many of my securities from "Mixed/Multiple" to what I wanted -- only to find that the next time I opened my Quicken data file, those securities were all back to "Mixed/Multiple".

It would be even better if in fact the sector allocation data for each fund were indeed pulled from a credible source (I vote Morningstar) so that we could view our overall portfolio allocations even more accurately. But I hope at least that they fix it so that at least all my work/changes gets saved properly.

RCinNJ

I haven't received a 6.3 update notice yet, so maybe they are fixing this before rolling out a 6.3.1?

jacobs

@RCinNJ  Version 6.3.1 is out now.

@Mike H I think as long as you download transactions from your investment financial institution, Quicken is accepting whatever asset classification information the financial institution sends. Now that Quicken is using the classification based on the holdings of each security -- currently in the Dashboard, and in the future, in the Portfolio view as well -- it seems to me users could just set every publicly traded security as Mixed, and only use the other asset types for any assets where Quicken is unable to get that information.

Mike H

@RCinNJ I actually manually enter all my investment account transactions; however, Quicken does seem to recognize and automatically enter security details as soon as I type in the symbol for a new stock, fund, or ETF. Not sure where it's pulling that info from, but if it could download that, seems like it could download each fund's or ETF's latest sector allocation as well. (My guess is that Quicken would have to pay more to third-parties for that, but I would consider paying more for my subscription fees if within reason.)

PQuincy

Yes, the update broke my asset classes too! They were pretty broad and general, but I do track my portfolio makeup using these categories, and it is unacceptable, I would say, for an update to simply make wholesale changes in a set of existing tags, without warning. Ugh! I like that Quicken is finally investing in the Mac version and providing updates and improvements... but please, folks, don't just overwrite your customers' data without asking!

PQuincy

The new categories are completely loony, too... they are not coming from the investment houses. How can a "Money Market Fund" be categories as "Asset Mixture"? An Asian Stock Fund as "Asset Mixture"? I how no idea where Quicken 6.3.1. is getting its Asset Types, but it's all messed up.

jacobs

@PQuincy It's not as "all messed ups" as you might think. "Asset Mixture" apparently just means that Quicken is pulling a drill-down breakdown from their third-party data supplier (perhaps Morningstar?). So if your Asian Stock Fund has 99% international stocks and 1% cash or domestic stocks, Quicken will apply that exact breakdown to the amount you hold in that fund. To me, this is a good thing. Most of my mutual funds aren't 100% one asset class, so having Quicken correctly calculate them is a good step forward. From my understanding, going forward, every security which Quicken gets data for could be called "Asset Mixture", and it will correctly allocate the proper dollar amounts to the proper categories. The only reason you'd want to assign asset classes is for private securities or international securities for which Quicken can't download information.

That said, unfortunately with the 6.3 release, we're in an in-between state. The Dashboard asset allocation is doing the calculation based on the makeup of each security, but the Portfolio asset allocation is using just the asset class in each security's setup screen. The product manager has said they will change this in a future release so Portfolio is calculated the same as the Dashboard is now. For now, we have to live with the Portfolio view asset allocations not being very useful.

PQuincy

Thanks for the explanation, @jacobs. Yet, still, in my book, over-writing user data and changing existing tags without warning is "all messed up". And calling an Asian fund with 1% domestic cash an 'asset mixture' is not helpful to 99% of investors -- and the 1% it is useful for will probably have their own Bloomberg terminals.

It's also annoying that trying to provide sensible categories manually is overridden by the new version. Why allows to manually enter Asset Classes when they are just erased at Quit!

So: points to Quicken for developing a better asset diversification tool. But demerits for messing up the existing (admittedly crude) tools in the process... and again, without warning!

smayer97

PQuincy said:

... over-writing user data and changing existing tags without warning is "all messed up"....

100% Agree.... Quicken should NEVER EVER EVER overwrite user entered data unless explicitly allowed by the user. WHENEVER it does... this is "all messed up"... there is no two ways about it.... an "in-between" state should never be an acceptable justification. Anything short of this, erodes confidence in Quicken being able to preserve integrity of user data.

jacobs

PQuincy said:

And calling an Asian fund with 1% domestic cash an 'asset mixture' is not helpful to 99% of investors -- and the 1% it is useful for will probably have their own Bloomberg terminals.

I disagree, but hear me out. I'm saying that the asset class label in Quicken Mac is on its way to becoming largely irrelevant (except for securities Quicken cannot get data about). I'm saying that you won't need to label your Asian Stock Fund in the international stock asset class because Quicken will do it for you, and do it correctly if 1% or 2% or 10% of the fund's holdings fall into a different asset class. Quicken will give you a better breakdown of your assets by class than you could by assigning each security to just one asset class.

Now, that said, thy jumped forward with this without providing some of the additional pieces which are needed to make this work smoothly. In Quicken Windows, a user can see a percentage breakdown of asset classes for a security; in Quicken Mac, this data exists but is not yet viewable or editable by users. And they made the change in order to get the Dashboard to work, without taking into account that it leaves the Portfolio view by asset class largely useless until they hook it up to the same logic used by the Dashboard. So yes, I'll agree that's "messed up". They should have at least been aware of how this would mess people up temporarily, and communicated it. This feature needs one of those signs you see on highways under construction: "Temporary inconvenience. Permanent improvement." 

wbeekman

Need the ability to define custom asset classes and assign to securities. Even duplicating the 10 custom asset classes that are in QWin would work -- Mid Cap, High Yield, and Cryptocurrencies are examples of a missing asset classes.

jacobs

Quicken Mac is moving to functionality where each security can be broken down to multiple different asset classes -- e.g. 51% large cap stocks, 48% domestic bonds, 3% money market -- and this information is coming from a third-party source (I suspect Morningstar).

If the third-party doesn't use the asset classes you want, then it can't supply them. The absence of Mid-cap stocks does puzzle me. Bonds are typically classified as domestic or international, but not further broken down. And Quicken doesn't yet support Cryptocurrencies. The latter illustrates exactly why you might want -- or need -- custom asset classes, but they need to do this in a careful way such that users  don't enter lots of custom classes (such as sector allocations or management styles) and then never be able to have Quicken fetch information for funds it should be able to break down automatically. 

Herb A

"The Mixed/Multiple" asset classification which Quicken is applying to my investments leads to an inaccurate Dashboard Report. I cannot trust this version of the Investment Dashboard Report until Quicken Support rectifies the situation. Ideally there should be more asset classification descriptions until there are no Mixed/Multiple classifications left to skew the report inaccurately.

ttravaille

Agree - Portfolio view should match Dashboard view, unless customer overrides a custom Asset Class for the Security. Q - this is really painful. Please fix what you broke before adding new, often limited value, features.