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How to handle exchanges in portfolio

rjsattler

Some recent transactions from my brokerage has me perplexed in how to deal with them. A couple of stocks have changed names -OR- were exchanged between stock symbols (I haven't researched why these businesses did this, will pursue later). For example, all the shares in "Royal Dutch Shell PLC" were exchanged for an equal number of shares in "Shell PLC ADR". Quicken flagged the transactions as sales.

Is there a process for handling this in Quicken? How should I handle this, as now I have 0 shares of each security and Quicken wants the cost basis of double the amount of shares for each.
Cheers!

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Accepted answers

rjsattler

I figured it out by creating a placeholder for the transactions that Quicken was confused about, then in the placeholder section, changed the sale to a buy with the original buy info (purchase price). Interesting that Quicken saved the "exchange" memo text from the "sale" transaction that my broker sent. So, never mind :)
Cheers to all!

q_lurker

@rjsattler. Three things have taken place with respect to what was Royal Dutch Shell in the past three months - the name changed, the ticker changed, and the two share classes were simplified to one. With the share class simplification, undoubtedly the CUSIP also changed. I can’t determine specific timing on all these changes. With respect to handling all that in Quicken, you have choices.

I would:

Delete any related transactions downloaded from the broker - buys, sells, placeholders, etc.
Delete any new Shell security similarly created
Edit the Royal Dutch Shell security to change the name and change the ticker. There I would also uncheck the box as Matched with online security.
At the next download I would match the broker’s Shell to this security.

As I said, you have options.

All comments

rjsattler

Adding: I'm guessing that the stock symbol changed on one stock (still logged in quicken as two sales?) Would I delete the two sales and then edit the ORIGINAL stock symbol using Security Detail? Thanks again!

rjsattler

DKuehl2020

I have the same problem. Your solution seems more a conversation with yourself than a step by step process the average user needs to solve the problem.

Frankx

Hi @DKuehl2020

I would suggest that you post your "problem" in a new thread.

Frankx

Jim_Harman

There are several types of transactions that might be considered "exchanges"

1) Some mutual fund companies call it an "exchange" when you sell one fund and buy another with the proceeds. This is a taxable transaction and should be entered as Sold and Bought transactions in Quicken.

2) Sometimes a company changes its name, as recently happened with Facebook. You can enter that as a Corporate Name Change or simply edit the Security Details to change the name. Note that this will change the name for all transactions in this security, including those before the name change. The ticker symbol may also change, and the prices will start to download under the new ticker. You should change the ticker in the Security Details when this occurs. In the case of Facebook, the ticker change has not occurred yet.

3) Sometimes the company name changes as part of a spinoff or other reorganization. You need to research the details of these situations. Often there will be a discussion on this forum on how best to enter these.

4) Sometimes a mutual fund has a share class conversion, where the shares of one fund are "converted" into a different class of shares of the same fund. This is a non-taxable event and you should use a Mutual Fund Conversion for this.

In any event, the transactions downloaded by brokers are often incorrect for these situations and may need to be deleted and replaced with the correct ones for Quicken to continue tracking your securities accurately.

q_lurker

I would:

Delete any related transactions downloaded from the broker - buys, sells, placeholders, etc.
Delete any new Shell security similarly created
Edit the Royal Dutch Shell security to change the name and change the ticker. There I would also uncheck the box as Matched with online security.
At the next download I would match the broker’s Shell to this security.

As I said, you have options.

jzsjr

What if you owned both Royal Dutch Shell A and B?

q_lurker

I would consider as I outlined above, then perhaps a Corporate Acquisition with SHEL acquiring the other.

Backup first in case you do not like those results.

Jan Kolek

I have 8 different lots of RDS.A purchased over several years, for a total of 70 shares of RDS.A.

First, I reviewed the securities list to make sure that both RDS.A (Royal Dutch Shell) and SHEL (Shell PLC) were listed. Each of the two securities had a different CUSIP listed (which I presume came from the downloads from the broker???).

Then I performed the "Corporate Acquisition" transaction which took about a minute because it was processing each lot individually. When it was done, the SHEL total share quantity (70), acquisition cost, current value, and gain/loss agreed exactly with the values from my broker. The process added 8 different lots of SHEL at the original acquisition prices to the Quicken account register and then removed the 70 shares of RDS.A

So it seems the above is the correct approach; at least it worked for me.

q_lurker

@“Jan Kolek” - That is certainly a viable approach. One thing to watch going forward is how performance measure are reported. For some circumstances SHEL performance may be misstated or misleading. In many cases, you would want to be looking at the combined performance of RDS.A and SHEL.