Downloaded Quotes 0.00% red and black

Bob.

I find this odd. No rhyme or reason why some 0.00% are red and some black. Does not follow the gain or loss of the stock.

Any explanation?

Bug?

Sherlock

The Price Day Change (%) should be calculated using the most recent priors day's price against the current day's price.  If the current price is less than the earlier price, the percentage is negative. Note: The actual percentage calculated may round to 0.00%.

As I would have expected to have see corresponding amounts in the Price Day Change column, I suspect the view may be corrupt.  I suggest resetting the view: select Customize and Reset View

Rocket J Squirrel

I'll guess these are mutual funds. Mine appear the same way. Because they don't price until after market closes, they should all have empty Price Day Change and zero Price Day Change (%) until then.

There is no reason to think they are getting any data during the day to show some of those 0.00% as positive and others as negative due to rounding; the price change does not yet exist. It's yet another mystery of Quicken.

Bob.

Thanks. The screen shot is before the day's market close and after midnight so nothing in the Price Day Change is expected until the close of market and Quicken's retrievals of quotes. And the 0.00% also expected. It is not a broken view.

But what I was curious about is I could not relate the colors to Gain/Loss. If they are the previous day vs today, that might make sense. I shall see at today's market close.

Bob.

Rocket J Squirrel said:

I'll guess these are mutual funds. Mine appear the same way. Because they don't price until after market closes, they should all have empty Price Day Change and zero Price Day Change (%) until then.

There is no reason to think they are getting any data during the day to show some of those 0.00% as positive and others as negative due to rounding; the price change does not yet exist. It's yet another mystery of Quicken.

Thanks. I agree I'll see what it changes to tonight and see if I can find a pattern.

Sherlock

Bob. said:

Thanks. The screen shot is before the day's market close and after midnight so nothing in the Price Day Change is expected until the close of market and Quicken's retrievals of quotes. And the 0.00% also expected. It is not a broken view.

But what I was curious about is I could not relate the colors to Gain/Loss. If they are the previous day vs today, that might make sense. I shall see at today's market close.

It might be interesting to see if the same sign appear in the Day Gain/Loss column.

Note: All our mutual funds have blank Price Day Change and Price Day Change (%) until we import the day's price.

Bob.

Sherlock said:

It might be interesting to see if the same sign appear in the Day Gain/Loss column.

Note: All our mutual funds have blank Price Day Change and Price Day Change (%) until we import the day's price.

The Day Gain/Loss is always black until the days quotes come in. At least for me.

And yes, I understand the blank until...BUT my question has SOLELY been on how Quicken determines Red or Black. Only question. Sorry if I were not perfectly clear. I understand all the rest

Bob.

The Red and Black does NOT indicate whether the previous day was a gain or loss. Everything above lost yesterday.

q_lurker

Can't say what is going on.  When I have no price for the day ('today' for mutual funds before the closing NAV is reported, for example), my Price Day Change is blank, like yours, but my Price Day Chg % is then also blank, unlike yours.  

In the one test I made where I had today's price the same as yesterday's price (no change), the Price Day Change value remained blank (not $0.00 as I would expect) and the Price Day Chg % showed black 0.00%.  I don't know what might lead to a red 0.00%.

Bob.

Curious, isn't it?

Chris_QPW

My guess would be that the color is based on digits that you can't see because they are rounded off for the display.

One of the first things a programmer learns about working with real numbers is that you can't count on them to being exact.  Not only do you have normal mathematical rounding problems,1/3 for instance, computers use binary and humans want to see things in decimal, the conversion between the two isn't exact.  It very possible to come up with numbers like 0.00000000001 or -0.00000000001.

Sherlock

Bob. said:

Sherlock said:

It might be interesting to see if the same sign appear in the Day Gain/Loss column.

Note: All our mutual funds have blank Price Day Change and Price Day Change (%) until we import the day's price.

The Day Gain/Loss is always black until the days quotes come in. At least for me.

And yes, I understand the blank until...BUT my question has SOLELY been on how Quicken determines Red or Black. Only question. Sorry if I were not perfectly clear. I understand all the rest

Strange...  Our Day Gain/Loss like our is always blank until we import the day's price.

You have checked the securities' price history?

Regarding the color, I explained how I think it should work in my first response, but, just to be clear, negative is red and positive is black.  A small negative percentage may round to -0.00%.  For example, -0.0049% would round to -0.00%.

q_lurker

Bob. said:

Curious, isn't it?

I am more curious as to why you would have the same quote two days in a row for a 'large' group of securities - leading to the blank Price Day Chg & red/black 0.00%. 

Red? Black?  0.00% is 0.00% in either color.  

Bob.

Chris_QPW said:

My guess would be that the color is based on digits that you can't see because they are rounded off for the display.

That's a great and clever thought, Chris. However, based on what value? EVERY one of thos yesterday lost. So none positive and no values yet imported for today.

I'll still see what happens in an hour. Then note that. Then check in the morning.

Chris_QPW

Bob. said:

Chris_QPW said:

My guess would be that the color is based on digits that you can't see because they are rounded off for the display.

That's a great and clever thought, Chris. However, based on what value? EVERY one of thos yesterday lost. So none positive and no values yet imported for today.

I'll still see what happens in an hour. Then note that. Then check in the morning.

EDIT (correct the math):

The 0.0% is a calculation, not a fixed number. It is today's price divided by yesterday's multiplied by 100.  As I mentioned that isn't guaranteed to be exactly zero because of the conversions involved.

Note that as @Shelock pointed out the sign on the number is another indication that this is what is happening.

Rocket J Squirrel

Chris_QPW said:

It is subtracting the price it had yesterday from what it has today.

But it doesn't have today's price yet for mutual funds.

Chris_QPW

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Chris_QPW said:

It is subtracting the price it had yesterday from what it has today.

But it doesn't have today's price yet for mutual funds.

True, so what do you think they are using in the calculation?
They are using yesterday's price in both places.

Bob.

You know I never noticed the - sign. That is interesting as well.

But again, I have to say that every one of those were down yesterday. If based on yesterday's numbers, cannot have a black positive. And as confirmed by others, there is no new number from today to put into the equation!!

Never thought this would generate this much acivity !! More than my birthday wishes on FaceBook But it is very curious to me why it is how it is.

Will go look at today soon.

Rocket J Squirrel

Of all Quicken's many, many quirks, this is possibly the most trivial. I admit I spent a couple minutes comparing today's zeros against yesterday's changes. I hypothesized that the determiner for +0.00% vs. -0.00% might be the sign bit from the most recent actual change. But that turned out not to be the case and I don't feel terribly motivated to pursue it further.

Bob.

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Of all Quicken's many, many quirks, this is possibly the most trivial. I admit I spent a couple minutes comparing today's zeros against yesterday's changes. I hypothesized that the determiner for +0.00% vs. -0.00% might be the sign bit from the most recent actual change. But that turned out not to be the case and I don't feel terribly motivated to pursue it further.

I do not disagree it is trivial and creates no errors. As I mentioned, I think its very curious which is why it caught my attention.

Most, if not all of my other threads actually have mission critical issues such as the PayPal conversion in downloading info.

I'll let you all know if I find anything.

Bob.

OK, Right now it is exactly right for today's pricing. Those down are - in red. Those up are + in black.

Tomorrow morning shall tell the tale when there are no daily prices yet. I would expect the 0.00 to be colored as todays results are in red and black. Shall see.

Chris_QPW

I tried to reproduce this doing some calculations in a C++ program and couldn't.   Which makes sense because even though the conversions aren't guaranteed to be exact, when using the exact same numbers, it should be.  1.223232 / 1.223232 should equal 1 exactly.

So, I don't know exactly what calculations they are using to produce this result, but I'm pretty sure is like what I suggested, for some reason they are actually not getting exactly zero and some are slightly positive, and others are slightly negative.

I know this kind of thing has popped up in the Mac threads too.

Sherlock

Bob. said:

OK, Right now it is exactly right for today's pricing. Those down are - in red. Those up are + in black.

Tomorrow morning shall tell the tale when there are no daily prices yet. I would expect the 0.00 to be colored as todays results are in red and black. Shall see.

This is what we see before the day's price is imported:

Chris_QPW said:

I tried to reproduce this doing some calculations in a C++ program and couldn't.   Which makes sense because even though the conversions aren't guaranteed to be exact, when using the exact same numbers, it should be.  1.223232 / 1.223232 should equal 1 exactly.

So, I don't know exactly what calculations they are using to produce this result, but I'm pretty sure is like what I suggested, for some reason they are actually not getting exactly zero and some are slightly positive, and others are slightly negative.

I know this kind of thing has popped up in the Mac threads too.

I recall there was an issue triggered when some financial institutions posted their mutual funds after midnight eastern that tripped up Quicken. The quote server may post the price with a different precision for the correct day.   I would expect the future quote to appear in the view and in the price history.  Note: The future price may appear to be the same as the previous price but, again, there is rounding that masks the actual values on display.

q_lurker

I don't think this is directly a quote server issue.  I have never seen the quote server provide a price for 'today' until after the close of trading 'today'.  I speculate that a brokerage house is sending yesterday's close with todays date.  The brokerage might do that after midnight up until the new closing value is available.  I haven't seen the separate Quicken quote server do that.  

Is that brokerage house value identical to the quote server value?  Don't know.  I have seen with csv price imports Quicken interpret the data different than the csv file shows.  For example, 123.45 from the csv file might show up in the Quicken price history records as 123.450001 or 123.449999.  But that has always been obvious to me in the price history records.  Have never noticed that behavior with QFX-style (direct connect or web-connect) data.   

Bob.

OK, more info

Again, let me say, this is a curiousity. It is not a painful error. I just do not understand how it works

When I woke this morning, before an OSU, I see this:

This does not evcene follow yesterdays loss or gain for the same holdings shown above.

Now, after an OSU and with markets closed and no info from today at all:

Red 0.00%'s do not make sense. And there is a " - " in red in the price day change column as well. Not at all related to yesterday nor anything from today.

This is better data than I had yesterday. We can see the OSU changes by "Getting Quotes" that do not yet exist. No way it could be grabbing before opening market data, especially on Mutual Funds.

So, all I know right now.

q_lurker

What do you see in the actual price history info for any of those securities?  

I predict -
Before the OSU, no price for today, only yesterday’s price. 

After a Quotes download only, same data. 

After a full OSU (brokerage downloaded included), prices for today even though no trading yet today. But how the full precision of that new price compares to yesterday’s price is the evidence you are not gathering. You need that evidence. 

Bob.

Will have to be tomorrow

Bob.

@q_lurker, you do mean the Quote Price Column, yes?

1. Today's closing price

2. Tomorrows's price before anything

3. Tomorrows price after quoytes only

4. Tomorrow's price after OSU

[Deleted User]

@Bob.  It could be both a calculation and formatting issue.  Some of the "Red Zero/Black Zero" situations can be explained by rounding, but others may just be where format programing determines the color.  Therefore, in some cases, the programming might make ALL numbers of a certain category red, no matter what the number is?

Bob.

Well, we will learn more. And as to my next test, might be Monday as markets closed this weekend. will document what I find.

q_lurker

Bob. said:

@q_lurker, you do mean the Quote Price Column, yes?

1. Today's closing price

2. Tomorrows's price before anything

3. Tomorrows price after quoytes only

4. Tomorrow's price after OSU

Actually, I meant going to the security details, More option, price history data. The Quote/Price column may not be the same precision.