ETF name change

davidmarketing

I had owned "TFI" - "State Street Barclays Muni Bond ETF" and completely liquated this equity a few years ago.

My roboaccount purchased TFI and the new name is "SPDR® Nuveen Bloomberg Municipal Bond ETF" so probably Barclays changed to Bloomberg.

I wanted to add the new security with the same symbol TFI
Any issues you can think of having two securities with the same symbol?

I think it would be ok because I believe the symbol is only used for downloading stock prices. I could also edit the original ETF name but I don't think that's correct since I didn't really own the new fund back in 2017. I could also do a name change transaction, but I don't know all the impacts of this plus I don't really need to tie the performance from 2017 to the performance of the new fund.

I think adding a new fund would be the best.

Thoughts?

Jim_Harman

I think the best approach would be to change the symbol for the old security to TFI-old or something like that and have Quicken keep the old prices with that symbol.

Then you can add TFI with its new name as a separate security. 

davidmarketing

Thanks @Jim_Harman.

Are there any other impacts if I change the symbol to a fake symbol like that? I will remove from the download quotes feature. I wouldn't want to lose the historical quotes since that is what determines the account balance in different years.

Jim_Harman

It is hard to tell what happened in real life, but it appears this fund has changed names a few times over the years. Morningstar has data for TFI going back to 2007.

In 2018, it was called "SPDR Nuveen Bloomberg Barclays Municipal Bond ETF" and now they have dropped the "Barclays". See
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20181228005003/en/State-Street-Global-Advisors-Announces-Index-Change-for-SPDR-Nuveen-Bloomberg-Barclays-Municipal-Bond-ETF

Assuming it was the same fund all along with no mergers, etc. and all they did was change the name, the safest approach in Quicken would be to change the name of the security, but that would change the name for your previous holding as well.

If you edit the symbol and create a new security for the new holding, you can keep the old name for your previous holding, and Quicken gives you the option of copying the old prices to the new symbol. I think that is the option you want. 

I don't know of any side effects of changing the symbol, but maybe someone else has more information.

Be sure to back up your data before making any changes, in case the result is not what you wanted.

q_lurker

Jim_Harman said:

… 
I don't know of any side effects of changing the symbol, but maybe someone else has more information.

Be sure to back up your data before making any changes, in case the result is not what you wanted.

I don’t know of any side effects either. I rather frequently make that sort of ticker change for securities that have been acquired or otherwise no longer exist in that form. For example, I have a T(old) for the former Ma Bell distinct from the current T that had been Southwestern Bell at one point. 

As Jim said, it is not clear to me if this is just a name change or something deeper. If truly applicable, the name change is probably better path. 

In making that ticker change you should get an option merge the prices from the old ticker to the new (I’d choose yes) and a second option to delete the prices for the prior ticker.  If you are taking the more cautious approach by treating these as two distinct securities, you would also say yes to the delete option. 

davidmarketing

Thanks @Jim_Harman and @q_lurker. I think the best path forward is to just do a name change in Quicken.

It really doesn't matter so much what I had in 2017 for the future - it's just nice info. I keep a separate Excel file to calculate my performance by security every year since Quicken is so quirky and so many securities have either changed through mergers, bankruptcies, that I run the Quicken report and then create a separate excel file to figure all these nuances out. I think I will just change the name in Quicken and add a comment in this excel file.

I think what I wanted to do would work in terms of two equities with the same symbol - but I am not so trusting that the Quicken ai wouldn't mess it up.

David

davidmarketing

@Jim_Harman, I wanted to let you know since you have been helpful - I ended up testing a few different scenarios after backing up the file. The name change transaction seemed to be the same as editing the ETF name so I just did that.

Now I need to fix some of my web cloud issues so stay tuned for more questions. Thanks!

q_lurker

davidmarketing said:

...
The name change transaction seemed to be the same as editing the ETF name so I just did that.

The Corporate Name Change action sticks a reminder in your transaction list that the security changed names on that date and uses the memo field to identify the old name.  Also something you could do manually, if you chose to.  

davidmarketing

Hi @q_lurker, it didn't add that transaction in the register. It definitely used to because I did this before and remember how it listed it with an old name in the notes. Or, let's say it's not in the register of the account that I added the transaction.

I just did it with a date last week and it edited the name, but the transaction isn't there. So, either it's a bug or Quicken changed it.

David