Quicken Mac v6.8 has been released!

glennmacc

Quicken Eli said:

glennmacc said:

I have a couple of comments that I see in 6.8.0.  First, I am happy that we are edging closer to accurate breakdowns of asset classes in Mutual Funds, etc.  But...here are two issues that I am disappointed in and/or confused by.

1.  Disappointed:  There does not seems to be a way to see the asset classes of any one mutual fund.  I'd like to look at a fund and see that it is 40% large cap 20% small cap, or whatever (I'd actually like to see a full "x-ray" of the fund to see the actual securities - I know you can see the top 10 in the "security overview" about a fund; still, I'd prefer it be in the app itself and reportable) but this does not seem possible.  When you click on a security when looking at your portfolio by asset class (where you might expect a breakdown of the securities in that mutual fund), you simply have the choice of "security overview".  

2.  Confused:  In the "performance" report, if you view by asset class, the dreaded "asset mixture" still occupies the great majority of the breakdown.  It is as if this report did not get the word that asset mixture was out and the specific asset classes were in in 6.8.  See the attached image.  Though you cannot see it, "asset mixture" was 100% of this portfolio.  Actual Stocks and Bonds are listed correctly, but not mutual funds.

Thoughts?

glennmacc - Thanks for your comments.  And thanks to @Jon for pointing out the workaround for comment #1.  As for comment #2, I can shed some light there.  We actually spent quite a bit of time internally discussing how to show performance of these mixed asset securities.  It is not as simple as it might first appear!

Consider the case where you have a mutual fund that is 50% large stock and 50% international.  Let's say that at the beginning of some time period, it is worth $1000, and at the end it is worth $2000.  Quicken knows the performance of the overall fund - it grew by 100%.  But Quicken does not know how much of that growth was due to the large stock component and how much is due to the international component.  Indeed, one of them might have been much larger than 100% and the other one might have been flat or even negative.  There is just no way to accurately determine that.

So rather than arbitrarily assume that they both grew equally at 100% (which really would not provide any insight into your investments), we decided to just show the data as we always have, accurately, as a mixed asset.

By the way, the same reasoning applies to the third view - Realized Gains.  If you were to sell that mutual fund at $2000 and realize $1000 in gains, Quicken would not know how much of the realized gain came from the component asset classes.

Quicken Eli,

Thanks for this.  I understand your point and see that it is a bit complicated.  Here is how I'd push back a bit:

Virtually all Mutual Funds are sold as some type of specific fund.  They are "Large Cap Growth Funds" or "Small Cap Funds" or "Bond Funds" or "International Stock Funds" or similar.  Most never would have 50% large Cap domestic equities and 50% international.  Generally if a fund is called "Large Cap" is has at least 80% of its assets in that type of security.  

So...though not exact, it still seems like the information would be useful to see how your funds are performing per their underlying primary asset class.  It still would be more useful than lumping all mutual funds under "Asset Mixture" meaning bond funds and large cap funds (which perform completely differently) are shown together.

So...I get your point, but think you made the wrong call here.  IMO of course.

As a compromise, how about a check box in the Security Settings that says "Treat as an asset mixture" or "Treat as the primary security type" for purposes of performance?

Glenn

jacobs

glennmacc said:
Virtually all Mutual Funds are sold as some type of specific fund.  They are "Large Cap Growth Funds" or "Small Cap Funds" or "Bond Funds" or "International Stock Funds" or similar.  Most never would have 50% large Cap domestic equities and 50% international.  Generally if a fund is called "Large Cap" is has at least 80% of its assets in that type of security

@glennmacc  I'll respectfully disagree with you on this assertion. There are many, many funds which are a mix. I own several. For example, the Vanguard Global Equity Fund has a  makeup is 39% large cap domestic, 19% small cap domestic, and 38% international stock. How would you expect Quicken to place that security in one asset class? Which one? And if it picked the largest percentage, wouldn't that be pretty misleading to have this fund listed as Large Cap Domestic, when in fact it's only 39% so?

I think another common case of a mixed bag is balanced funds, which mix stocks and bonds. Certainly there are lots of target date retirement funds like this. Another example from my holdings: the Vanguard Balanced Index Fund is 43% large cap stock, 16% small cap stock, and 39% domestic bond. Again, should Quicken count this security entirely as large cap stock, because that's the largest component? I just don't think that would work.

glennmacc

jacobs said:

glennmacc said:
Virtually all Mutual Funds are sold as some type of specific fund.  They are "Large Cap Growth Funds" or "Small Cap Funds" or "Bond Funds" or "International Stock Funds" or similar.  Most never would have 50% large Cap domestic equities and 50% international.  Generally if a fund is called "Large Cap" is has at least 80% of its assets in that type of security

@glennmacc  I'll respectfully disagree with you on this assertion. There are many, many funds which are a mix. I own several. For example, the Vanguard Global Equity Fund has a  makeup is 39% large cap domestic, 19% small cap domestic, and 38% international stock. How would you expect Quicken to place that security in one asset class? Which one? And if it picked the largest percentage, wouldn't that be pretty misleading to have this fund listed as Large Cap Domestic, when in fact it's only 39% so?

I think another common case of a mixed bag is balanced funds, which mix stocks and bonds. Certainly there are lots of target date retirement funds like this. Another example from my holdings: the Vanguard Balanced Index Fund is 43% large cap stock, 16% small cap stock, and 39% domestic bond. Again, should Quicken count this security entirely as large cap stock, because that's the largest component? I just don't think that would work.

jacobs:

Well I guess I wasn't thinking about those mixed funds, or target date funds, but I still think they are in the minority.  In any event, my proposed compromise would allow both of use to be happy with the result.

And just for the sake of argument, I'd say that if you can determine the mix in those funds (I assume through Morningstar), then Quicken can use the same information and have a better result (not perfect, but better than nothing). I'd still rather have Quicken report the average performance of the fund to the 43% Large Cap, 16% Small Cap, etc. (even if not perfectly accurate) breakdown then have a performance result for "Asset Mix" which tells me nothing.

But again, the compromise above allows both.

Glenn

 

jacobs

glennmacc said:
I'd say that if you can determine the mix in those funds (I assume through Morningstar), then Quicken can use the same information

The data I used did come from Quicken.  It's the data it is using on the Asset Allocation calculations in the Portfolio and Dashboard windows. (Open Edit Security and click View Asset Mixture.) I don't think we know where Quicken gets its data; the assumption is Morningstar, but I don't know if this has ever been confirmed. 

glennmacc said:
As a compromise, how about a check box in the Security Settings that says "Treat as an asset mixture" or "Treat as the primary security type" for purposes of performance?
...
I'd still rather have Quicken report the average performance of the fund to the 43% Large Cap, 16% Small Cap, etc. (even if not perfectly accurate) breakdown then have a performance result for "Asset Mix" which tells me nothing. But again, the compromise above allows both.

So with your proposed compromise, you are arguing for an ability to override Quicken's downloaded asset mix and treat the security as its largest component, right? Making this a preference would then make it apply in the Dashboard and in the Portfolio by Asset Allocation views, right? Well, you already have this option! When you open Edit Security, you can tell Quicken to ignore the asset allocation it downloads, and just assign it to a single asset class:

Simply uncheck the Asset Class checkbox which is checked by default, and assign the security to whatever asset class you want. 

But I agree with Quicken Eli's explanation about why they programmed it the way they did: viewing Portfolio Values by Asset Allocation, you take advantage of driving into the asset mix of your holdings, whereas viewing by Performance, you don't because they can't determine the performance broken down by asset class. It sounds like you want it to do both: use the asset allocations in one place and ignore them and assign a single asset class in another. I don't think that would be easy to implement, nor easy for most Quicken users to understand.

Personally, I find with the Portfolio view filtered by Performance, I'm mainly interested in filtering by Security — I want to see the performance of each of my securities. (Same for gains.) I don[t feel I have much need to see the performance of each security broken down by asset class, especially if I know it isn't accurate data. If I want to see asset allocation, I switch to filter by Portfolio Value.

If I want to see how different types of investments perform, I can look up performance of various indexes. Now I do wish we could add selected indexes — which already exist in Quicken Mac but can't be seen anywhere except the list of securities — to things like the table and chart in the Portfolio view, so we could see how our securities fared performance-wise against various indexes.

glennmacc

jacobs said:

glennmacc said:
I'd say that if you can determine the mix in those funds (I assume through Morningstar), then Quicken can use the same information

The data I used did come from Quicken.  It's the data it is using on the Asset Allocation calculations in the Portfolio and Dashboard windows. (Open Edit Security and click View Asset Mixture.) I don't think we know where Quicken gets its data; the assumption is Morningstar, but I don't know if this has ever been confirmed. 

glennmacc said:
As a compromise, how about a check box in the Security Settings that says "Treat as an asset mixture" or "Treat as the primary security type" for purposes of performance?
...
I'd still rather have Quicken report the average performance of the fund to the 43% Large Cap, 16% Small Cap, etc. (even if not perfectly accurate) breakdown then have a performance result for "Asset Mix" which tells me nothing. But again, the compromise above allows both.

So with your proposed compromise, you are arguing for an ability to override Quicken's downloaded asset mix and treat the security as its largest component, right? Making this a preference would then make it apply in the Dashboard and in the Portfolio by Asset Allocation views, right? Well, you already have this option! When you open Edit Security, you can tell Quicken to ignore the asset allocation it downloads, and just assign it to a single asset class:

Simply uncheck the Asset Class checkbox which is checked by default, and assign the security to whatever asset class you want. 

But I agree with Quicken Eli's explanation about why they programmed it the way they did: viewing Portfolio Values by Asset Allocation, you take advantage of driving into the asset mix of your holdings, whereas viewing by Performance, you don't because they can't determine the performance broken down by asset class. It sounds like you want it to do both: use the asset allocations in one place and ignore them and assign a single asset class in another. I don't think that would be easy to implement, nor easy for most Quicken users to understand.

Personally, I find with the Portfolio view filtered by Performance, I'm mainly interested in filtering by Security — I want to see the performance of each of my securities. (Same for gains.) I don[t feel I have much need to see the performance of each security broken down by asset class, especially if I know it isn't accurate data. If I want to see asset allocation, I switch to filter by Portfolio Value.

If I want to see how different types of investments perform, I can look up performance of various indexes. Now I do wish we could add selected indexes — which already exist in Quicken Mac but can't be seen anywhere except the list of securities — to things like the table and chart in the Portfolio view, so we could see how our securities fared performance-wise against various indexes.

jacobs,

Thanks, I know about this check box, but if you uncheck it, you lose the Asset Class in the Portfolio view too.  What I am suggesting is a second checkbox that lets you choose the asset class for Performance only, since this is where the "Asset Mixture" is used.  So yes to your comment "It sounds like you want it to do both: use the asset allocations in one place and ignore them and assign a single asset class in another." That is what I'd like to do.  I do not know if it is easy or hard to implement (Quicken implemented one checkbox, so the second should not be that hard it seems to me), but that still makes more sense to me than just using the useless "Asset Mixture".  I agree that I look at these by security most often, and having benchmarks indexes to compare to would also help, but I'd still like to be able to choose the asset class for the performance aspect of the security.

Glenn

Paul3

Since the 6.8/6.8.1 update my Mac Mini M1 has been putting up a beach-ball after every new transaction entry, every edit to an existing transaction, and taking large amounts of time to save a backup when quitting Quicken. I have a very large data file and a ton of securities, but had no such problems in the 6.7 release.

Is anyone else seeing this issue?

** Resolved - I found other posts referencing Reports that get left open and slow everything down. BINGO - I had managed to leave two Net Worth reports open stuck behind the main Quicken window. Closed those and performance is back to normal.

Snoopy FC

6.9 is out.  Just downloaded today. 

maddogxx

> @jacobs said:
> I'm trying to understand what you're seeing and what your objection is. In the Portfolio, does Quicken show $5,000 in the money market fund and $216 in Cash when you set the filter to view by Security? "Cash in Security" should show up when filtered by Asset Class, but not when viewed by Security.
>
> In the transaction register, you're seeing only the cash is showing up as the balance? And that amount can be reconciled. You said you want to keep the money market separate from cash; is it not doing that for you in the transaction register?
I have 2 accounts with schwab. Quicken seems to have dropped the money markey entirely in one account i.e. the balance is shown as Cash and no asset called Schwab money market (SWVXX) exists and the transaction aren't shown. It reconciles fine with the entire balance as cash. In the other I have made a number of manual entries to show the progression of SWVXX transactions and have a separate asset (SWVXX) and cash. when I reconcile, there is an error equal to the money market account which was considered as cash. No way to reconcile without altering the displayed balances.

jacobs

@maddogxx The Schwab behavior with its money markets funds is intentional, and was announced by Quicken back in February. Here's a link to the announcement. It has never been explained why Schwab is sending its data into Quicken this way, but it seems it was a Schwab decision. 

maddogxx

@jacobs I did find this article in researching the errors, but not before making a lot of manual entries. The question is what to do next. I guess I have to reverse all these entries. Very confusing since the fund is not a sweep account and is listed in my holdings (perhaps because I didn't see the linked announcement in a timely manner).

sparcman

Was the ability to generate the FBAR Tax Report removed from Quicken Deluxe (Canada) for Mac? I used to be able to run it, but now I'm being prompted in v 6.11.1 to move to Home & Business which my understanding is not available on a Mac.

RCinNJ

Looks like Quicken is no longer doing Forum entries for every release? I just downloaded the latest version, discovered problems, and threw it out and replaced my previous copy of the program to the Applications folder. I am now attempting to restore my backup from yesterday, but they seem to have made this harder. For the first time QM is ignoring the online entry for my Vanguard account for cash sweeps into my sweep account (Federal Money Market). It is now showing as a cash balance even though there is a line item that I can see when I log into my Vanguard account online. Also, it missed the ADR custody fee for GSK which shows online! This is unacceptable. I did report this. Will it be address by Quicken as a bug or will this be the new behavior? Normally cash only shows in the account after a security sale before it has cleared and is moved to the settlement fund when Vanguard does.

jacobs

@RCinNJ You're posting in a thread about a release of Quicken Mac from 7 months ago. I'm not sure if that was your intent, but it's probably not the best place if you're having a current problem.

Next, you said you wanted to restore from your prior day backup, "but they seem to have made this harder." I don't think anything with regard to stepping backward has changed in years. You would need to restore your data file to the prior day's backup, and also re-install the prior version of Quicken Mac, which i automatically placed in your Trash folder when you install an update. With those two changes, you can certainly step back to your prior version.

If Quicken Mac "missed" a transaction, it's most likely that it wasn't sent, or wasn't coded properly, by the financial institution. Can you simply enter it manually? 

"Will it be addressed by Quicken as a bug." Hard to say, because it's not clear from your post whether there is an actual bug or an intentional change or a missed transaction. Several financial institutions now report money market fund transactions as cash transactions. I know this caused quite a stir last year when it first happened with Schwab. I'm not aware of seeing similar complaints about Vanguard, but it's possible they made a similar change. One question: are you downloading from Vanguard using Direct Connect or Quicken Connect? That could also be the source of a change, if you somehow changed connection method. In any case, if you want to pursue what you think is a bug, your best avenue is Quicken Support; posts here rarely get turned into bug reports unless they are clear-cut and widespread. In any case, if you want to pursue this on the forum, I suggest creating a new thread about the Vanguard issue you're experiencing, rather than following up on it in this old topic thread. 

RCinNJ

Thanks Jacobs, I realized I was posting on an old thread, but as I mentioned, they seem to have stopped creating threads for new releases and I saw the last post wasn't that long ago. Since this had to do with my experience after an update it wasn't clear to me where to post that would be appropriate for this. I did revert to the last version. I was seeing a question about Quicken Cloud that I didn't remember seeing in the past and wasn't sure of the right answer, but I figured it out. As I said, I can see the transactions on the Vanguard website and nothing has changed from the day before I updated when the same kinds of transactions were recorded properly. Unfortunately, it is never certain if something has changed or Quicken has just happened to screw up and miss a transaction. You are correct, this might be the case, it has happened before, and it may just be coincidence that this happened immediately after an update. I have several accounts at Vanguard and sometimes the same type of transaction will appear in one account but be missed in another. I did report this to Quicken. As a sample of one, whether it is a bug or just a chance error is impossible for me to know.

RCinNJ

I also hadn't noticed that they have stopped pinning the latest release to the top of the page. I missed the 6.10 release notification because it was down the page where new releases have never been before. Now I know not to expect the latest releases to be at the top.