Quicken has inaccurate data showing for dividend yield in the Investing tab

steve.wei

The Investing tab is showing incorrect data for dividend yield in the investing tab.
Formula is simple: Annual dividend / current price = dividend yield

steve.wei

Please fix this

NotACPA

Please name a specific security that this is happening with (so that we can try to re-create).

Also, is this happening with ALL securities or only one/few?

Has the security in question changed it's dividend in the past year?

Sherlock

Quicken does not calculate the Dividend Yield provided on a Portfolio view.  When available, the Dividend Yield is obtained from the third-party quote provider.

steve.wei

All securities.
Yes all have increased the dividend in the past year.
Example: JNJ Annual Dividend = $4.24, Current Price = $170.59
Therefore Dividend Yield should be: 4.24 divided by 170.59 = 0.024854 or 2.4854%
Quicken shows the "Dividend Yield" to be 2.6017. That is incorrect
Quicken states (description of...) "Dividend Yield" is: "Dividend Amount as a percentage of security price". Definition is correct data shown does not equal definition.

steve.wei

Re: Quicken does not calculate the Dividend Yield provided on a Portfolio view. When available, the Dividend Yield is obtained from the third-party quote provider.

If this is the case, then it is another example of the diminishing value of Quicken for use to "Track and manage your investments" as advertised.

In my opinion quicken should accurately provide this most basic stock tracking and management metric.
This could be easily accomplished by having quicken programmers add this simple calculation, or else quicken needs find a new third-party quote provider.

Allowing quicken to continue to provide INACCURATE Dividend Yield data is doing an injustice to to your customer base (who may well be trying to "Track and Manage" their portfolio!

Jim_Harman

Try this experiment: Look at the Dividend Yield for a security as you change the As of date in a Portfolio view. You will see that it does not change. Like the Annual Dividend, it is a fixed value downloaded along with the quote data and Quicken does not compute or store the historical values.

Using your JNJ example, the price that corresponds to the $4.24 annual dividend and 2.601% yield is 4.24/.02601 or $163.01. It is not clear what that corresponds to, but it is close to the closing price on 1/24.

Jim_Harman

For a related Idea thread, please see 
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20105770

A closer look at the Annual Dividend number indicates that when it is present, it is the sum of the last 12 months' dividend payments per share. 

steve.wei

Jim_Harman,
Thanks for your time in responding.

I already did your "experiment" and saw that the "Dividend Yield" was unchanged. That is why I started this thread.
The bottom line is that since the data provided in the Dividend Yield is NOT being updated to reflect the daily price change of a stock, so it should NOT be counted on to make buy/sell decisions.

Discovering this is a big disappointment to me, and is another example of the diminishing value of Quicken for use to "Track and manage your investments" as advertised.

In my opinion, quicken would better serve it's customer base by not providing the "Dividend Yield" column as an option, so that others who have not yet discovered that the data in this field is not accurate (NOT updated based on the current stock price, would not be making buy/sell decisions based on inaccurate data.

Continuing to include this field, may benefit quicken product sales, since it appears that the product provides a critical metric, but if the data is known to be inaccurate it is in fact a disservice to us all.

I have a grasp of the complexities involved creating a solution that would provide accurate data for ALL types of investments (i.e. - investments with monthly fluctuating dividend changes).
For most stocks, the industry typically provides - Updated daily:
"Dividend Yield TTM" (Calculated as Total dividend paid by the stock in the past year Divided BY current stock price)
"Dividend Yield FWD" (Calculated as Last announced dividend x dividend frequency Divided BY current stock price)

These important metrics are probably available to quicken by the third-party quote provider they currently use. If not, they should obtain it from a different third-party quote provider.

Providing the quicken user with this data, along with the appropriate definition of it's calculation used, is the recommended solution.

Current situation: Continuing to provide inaccurate data in the "Dividend Yield" field, along with the existing quicken definition, "Dividend Yield" is: "Dividend Amount AS A PERCENTAGE OF SECURITY PRICE", leads users to BELIEVE that they are being provided with accurate (updated daily) information.

In the end, I guess it is up to Quicken to decided how effectively their product can be used to "Track and manage your investments", as advertised. In my opinion, providing data that is known to be inaccurate (not being updated to reflect current share price) is a poor decision that can be/should be prioritized and added to the list of things to be corrected.

Jim_Harman

I agree that any investment data that Quicken presents should be clearly defined, complete, accurate, and up to date. Unfortunately the Dividend Yield and several other measures fail to meet this goal.

Repeated attempts over the years to get Quicken to improve the quality of the Quote data have had very limited success.

Ps56k2

The calc appears to be a couple days old....

Look at your Quicken JNJ - I'm just looking at the Security Details -
div is $4.24 and today 1/28 - lists the yield at 2.5294%

This dictates a share price of .... $4.24 / .025294 = $167.628

Now, go look at the Quicken Edit Price History...  anything close...

YUP - back on 1/25 - the Quicken listed closing price was $167.63

Jim_Harman

Not to excuse Quicken's out-of-date data, but this article
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dividendyield.asp

has a good discussion of Dividend Yield. One key take-away is:

• It's important for investors to keep in mind that higher dividend yields do not always indicate attractive investment opportunities because the dividend yield of a stock may be elevated as the result of a declining stock price. 

I like to focus on Total Return or IRR, as measured by the Avg. Annual Return columns in the Portfolio views or the Investment Performance Report.