Day Gain/Loss shows huge loss on day of purchase

Doug S.

I bought 18,643 shares of privately held shares for $60,000. Quicken calculated the correct price = $3.2183. The portfolio view shows that same number of shares, the same current price and the $60,000 market value. But on the purchase date it's showing a loss for the day of $118,319,890 !!!!! On subsequent days everything is fine and there is no cumulative gain/loss. The same thing occurs with other non-tradeable shares I buy. Any ideas what's happening?

Sherlock

I suggest you examine the price history of the security.  The calculation should be the change from the previous price multiplied by the current number of shares.  The implication is Quicken thinks the previous price was about $6349.8305.

Jim_Harman

Make sure you uncheck the Download Quotes box for any securities that are not publicly traded, to prevent Quicken from downloading incorrect quotes.

Doug S.

There is no previous price (the security doesn't exist on the previous day's portfolio view) and download quotes is not checked.

Sherlock

Doug S. said:

There is no previous price (the security doesn't exist on the previous day's portfolio view) and download quotes is not checked.

Then, I suggest you set one.  The security does exists on the previous day.  You just do not have the holding.

Right click on the security in the Portfolio view and select Price History.

q_lurker

With my R34.20 release of Quicken, if I buy a new security, the Day Gain/Loss shown in the Portfolio view shows a positive value equal to the purchase price.  If that day's Price/Quote (per share) is changed from the purchase price/share, the Day Gain/Loss becomes that updated Price x shares. 

In other words, the Day Gain/Loss is calculated as Current Shares x (Today's Price - Prior Day's Price) [as @Sherlock said above].  The Prior Day's Price may be $0.  It does not matter if you owned shares the prior date or not.  

Note that overall, this Day Gain/Loss calculation when there is a change in the number of shares is inherently flawed (just not normally to the degree you are seeing).  

Is there ANY reason that "new" security might have a prior price?  Does it have a ticker?  Might some other security (including hidden securities) have used that ticker before?  Does directly putting in a $0 value for the price the day before change the displayed value?

A file validation including Repair to Price History MIGHT clear it up.  (Backup your file before the validation.)

lawrenceculp

I have this same problem which has been occurring for some time now. Quicken usually fixes these issues within a few days with a new update, however this one has not been fixed.

UKR

lawrenceculp said:

I have this same problem which has been occurring for some time now. Quicken usually fixes these issues within a few days with a new update, however this one has not been fixed.

As was suggested above ... Have you reviewed your Price History for this security. Incorrect history records may not always get magically fixed and you may have to delete or correct bad entries yourself. If the problem shows up around the time a stock went thru a Stock Split process, history records for a week before and after the split may be incorrect and should be deleted or corrected.