How does Quicken Mac calculate Asset class values?

Wade Shanley

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

I believe it's their third priority quote service that provides this information.  For certain quicken is not calculating anything.

jacobs

This is what Vanguard shows for asset allocation for VTI:

Quicken and their quote service provider don't have 5 levels of stock allocations, just domestic large and small cap. If you combine Large + Large/Medium, it's 69.8%; if you combine Medium, Medium/Small and Small, it's 30.1%

Quicken reports:

So it's not an exact match, but pretty close. I'd also note that Vanguard's asset allocation chart is dated 5/31/22; it's likely that Quicken's provider's data is more current than that. 

If you wish, you can change the asset allocations in Quicken to be Large Cap = 69.8% and Small Cap = 30.1%, you can do that. Or if you want to allocate it differently, you can. 

Finally, why doesn't Quicken have and report mid-cap stocks as a separate asset class? I don't know, and I've never seen any explanation of why Quicken's asset classes are what they are. I would think mid-cap stocks would be a logical addition. Perhaps Quicken's data provider (which may or may not be Morningstar) only reports in these classes? 

Wade Shanley

thanks all. Some of these dashboards are nice, but the data is kinda crap...at least for the level of detail I need in allocations. I guess I'm stuck with using Personal Capital to review my asset allocation. no big deal but would love it if quicken could get this right. one can dream.

Chris_QPW

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.

jacobs

Chris_QPW said:

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.

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.

Chris_QPW said:

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.

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

@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.