How does Quicken Mac calculate Asset class values?

Question

I was recently looking at my investment dashboard and saw what looks like a bug. I hold VTI which has about 8% small-cap weighting (according to morningstar) but Quicken shows the small-cap weighting as 16%!  that is waaaay off.   Anyone know how quicken comes to these calculations or if there is a way for me to correct it? with poor data it makes the dashboard kind of useless. Also, why is there no Mid-cap weighting in here. it seems large, small and midcap should all be asset classes that can/should be tracked in this dashboard/reporting. I'd be fine if they used morningstar data.

Chris_QPW · Answer

@jacobs that is great that they do now allow adjusting the percentages.  On the customizing of the classes that has been curse and blessing as you stated in Quicken Windows.  The curse part is that Quicken Windows has/had some features that were based on those standard asset classes.  When they gave the ability to customize them, they remove one of these and the calculations in a couple of others are now wrong because they weren't updated.

These have to do with rebalancing and calculating the risks.

jacobs · Answer

Yes, as I noted above for the one Vanguard fund mentioned specifically, not only did Quicken's asset allocation differ from Morningstar, Morningstar different from Vanguard itself. Vanguard uses "medium/large" and "medium/small" classes in addition to large, medium and small cap.

For most investors, the exact breakdown of holdings isn't essential; it's having some reasonable idea of how your investments are diversified so you can adjust your investments if you wish.

I've said before that adding a separate table for sector allocation would be very useful for investors concerned about their diversification, but I don't know if the Quicken folks have any interest in adding that data.

Actually, Chris, Quicken Mac does now allow users to view and manually tweak the asset allocation of a security if they wish, just like Quicken Windows.

But Quicken Mac still does not have custom asset classes, which is both a curse and a blessing. The developers really do need to either allow custom classes or add a few additional classes, such as cryptocurrency, for those who need it.

Chris_QPW · Answer

The basic problem is there isn't any standard on asset classes.  You look at the different sources and they are all a bit different.  And Quicken's provider has never had any other ones than the ones you see in Quicken (both Mac and Windows).

A pretty recent addition to Quicken Windows was the adding of custom asset classes, but it has also always allowed the user to tweak the mixture if one didn't agree with what the third-party service is providing.  I believe that Quicken Mac is lacking both of these features.

Domestic Bonds to Unclassified at the default ones.