Investing - Allow edits to security INDUSTRY

gkading

I find that INDUSTRY is sometimes auto-populated and sometimes not populated at all; and often the auto-populated INDUSTRY does not make sense. There appears no way to edit the security assignment to a specific INDUSTRY. Allowing users to assign and edit INDUSTRY to specific securities would be a huge improvement, allowing users to view and analyze their portfolios by INDUSTRY with all securities fully assigned.

NotACPA

NO NO NO.  A Securities Industry is determined by the securities analysts and should NEVER be subject to the whim of a Q user. 

gkading

I believe NotACPA is missing the point. There are MANY investments for which Quicken assigns an INDUSTRY classification of 'Unknown' which is useless. There are other instances where Quicken assigns INDUSTRY as 'Asset Management' for mutual funds/ETF's even though many are highly focused on a specific industry. To be useful, the user should have full control over how the user views investments by INDUSTRY.
Further, I suspect that Quicken is attempting to obtain the INDUSTRY from Morningstar - which is fine to extent that Morningstar has INDUSTRY available - but the Morningstar assignment of INDUSTRY is not entirely consistent with the way the S&P assigns securities to INDUSTRY. For example: Morningstar assigns Google to TECHNOLOGY sector; S&P 500 assigns Google to COMMUNICATIONS SERVICES sector, INTERACTIVE MEDIA subsector (industry).

Jim_Harman

You can use the security's Investing Goal field for this purpose. Go to the Security Detail view, then click on Edit details and Other Info.

You can define your own "goals" and group the Investing > Portfolio views by goal. You can also filter and subtotal the Portfolio Value report by goal.

gkading

Jim: The point I am trying to make here is that the INDUSTRY field should be an editable field within Quicken, and to encourage Quicken to make that improvement. In my case, I already utilize the Investing Goal field for other purposes, as I suspect other users also do. From my perspective, it is a shortcoming of the software to not allow the field to be editable.

Jim_Harman

The issue is that the data is provided (or not) by Quicken's quote provider.

I suppose it could work the way downloaded asset classes do, where you have an opportunity for each security to override the downloaded data.

q_lurker

I'll put forth my supposition:
Industry/Category is a field only as a way to provide context for the individual security.  That is, Quicken provides a security's Debt/Equity ratio and the Industry field then allows for comparison of that security's D/E to its industry's D/E.  Same for price change, PEG, Price/Sales and a variety of similar measures.  You can compare such measures to the broad market, but it can be valuable to know how your investment is doing vs its competitors in the same industry. 

I think someone long ago sold Quicken on the idea that the program should provide that type of info.  Maybe it was an internal decision (like from Eric Dunn himself).  Maybe it was a sales pitch from Value-Line, Morningstar, or some other data supplier.  Doesn't really matter.  It happened 20-30 years ago and hasn't been touched since then (as I see it). 

Without those baseline comparisons, I don't see much value to the industry classification.  I do agree that some assignments can be baffling (Amazon as Home Improvement Retail, Southwest Airlines as Railroads?)  

Perhaps efforts toward a more general, broadly definable field would be better received.  Investing Goal is limited to only 15 'goals' as I recall but some reports and views make use of that field.  Others have wanted to track source of a recommendation. 

An 'anything goes' editable 'Industry' field would not be suitable IMO.  Selecting from a predefined set of established industry codes might be manageable.  I just don't see the value for the across the breadth user base.          

gkading

In reply to Jim Harmon:

"The issue is that the data is provided (or not) by Quicken's quote provider.

I suppose it could work the way downloaded asset classes do, where you have an opportunity for each security to override the downloaded data."

That is exactly what should happen within Quicken: data downloaded from Quicken's quote provider, with user option to override the downloaded data. Should not be that difficult.

gkading

In reply to q_lurker:
My impression of the Quicken investing tools, specifically wrt INVESTING, is similar to your observation - that being that the software is very stale and in need of some upgrades and improvements.

If Quicken were to pursue a 'predefined set of established industry codes' as you mention, I would strongly suggest starting with the S&P500 set of established codes: 126 industries across 11 sectors. But absolutely should be user editable with an override.

Could also use Morningstar I suppose, although my guess is that Morningstar not as widely adopted as S&P 500 - but *might* have industry assignment for broader set of securities, especially those smaller securities not in S&P500.

Jim_Harman

To further cloud this issue, not all FIs agree on the same set of Industries. So If I make Quicken's groupings look like one broker's statement, the groupings will be different than what another broker uses.

gkading

Agreed not all FI's view industries the same - that is why user intervention to edit the INDUSTRY is important to incorporate into the software.

Jim_Harman

@gkading
How would you propose dealing with the situation where a user holds the same security at two FIs that classify it differently? Would the industry assignments in Quicken have to be account specific, or would it be OK to specify one assignment for each security?

gkading

Should be an edit at the Security level that allows user to assign the Industry and override the downloaded assignment - should work similar to the way Asset Class works: user can uncheck the 'Download asset class information' box and assign the industry that makes most useful tracking for that individual.

Frank002

> @Jim_Harman said:
> You can use the security's Investing Goal field for this purpose. Go to the Security Detail view, then click on Edit details and Other Info.
>
> You can define your own "goals" and group the Investing > Portfolio views by goal. You can also filter and subtotal the Portfolio Value report by goal.

I would much rather be able to use the normal Group by Security and then be able to re-sort by clicking on a column in that view, but Investing Goal is not an available column.

lb1911a1

Industry should be editable in Quicken. It makes no sense that an oil company, e.g. Shell PLC is "Unknown", but Exxon Mobil Corp is "Oil & Gas Midstream".

poltah

I totally agree. It makes no sense that a user cannot edit his/her portfolio by industry. I constantly find myself looking across multiple accounts to try and determine the % of each industry contained in said accounts. ie: Holding multiple bank stocks, utilities, oil and gas and so on - all of which are grouped under the single heading of "International," without editing capabilities is counter productive Being able to edit under appropriate classifications ie: "Financials", "Utilities" and so on IMO only makes sense.