Holdings are a mess since day 1 - Help!

roger

Ever since the initial download of my connected Stifel investment account, the holdings have been way wrong. Since this account was transferred from another brokerage account, I doubt the history of the investment will be accurate. However, the number of holdings is way off, such that Quicken believes me to be a multi-millionaire, when I'm only a multi-thousandaire. It seems that many stock names might have change, but either Quicken didn't match them up or I didn't. Either way, I have way more than I should. I'm looking to find the best way to level-set. Sure, I'd like to have the history from initial purchase to present in the account, but I'll settle for what I can get. Anybody have any tips for getting this right on a mass scale? (Almost 100 securities in Quicken, when I have really 27 in my Stifel account.)

Tom Young

I don't know how long ago "day 1" was, but if it was a short while ago then I'd say bite the bullet, restore a backup, and start over.

If this was really a transfer of all the shares from one Financial Institution (FI) account to a different FI account then the most straight forward way of doing this, in my opinion, is to create the new Quicken Account with the new FI as a "manual" (non-downloading) Account. Then, use the "Shares Transferred Between Accounts" wizard to transfer the securities from the old Account to the new Account. 

In the new Account you should see one Add action for each lot of each security.  If your cost basis was correct in the old Account it will continue to be correct in the new Account.  When you're satisfied with the result then connect the new Account to the new FI.  DON'T "accept" any downloads from either the old FI in the old Account or from the new FI in the new Account.  Simply delete them.

This should leave all the original transactions in the old Account, and that reflects what went on in the real world, and your new Account should contain all the correct detail of your holdings at the time of the transfer, which also reflects the real world.

Tom Young

I don't know how long ago "day 1" was, but if it was a short while ago then I'd say bite the bullet, restore a backup, and start over.

If this was really a transfer of all the shares from one Financial Institution (FI) account to a different FI account then the most straight forward way of doing this, in my opinion, is to create the new Quicken Account with the new FI as a "manual" (non-downloading) Account. Then, use the "Shares Transferred Between Accounts" wizard to transfer the securities from the old Account to the new Account. 

In the new Account you should see one Add action for each lot of each security.  If your cost basis was correct in the old Account it will continue to be correct in the new Account.  When you're satisfied with the result then connect the new Account to the new FI.  DON'T "accept" any downloads from either the old FI in the old Account or from the new FI in the new Account.  Simply delete them.

This should leave all the original transactions in the old Account, and that reflects what went on in the real world, and your new Account should contain all the correct detail of your holdings at the time of the transfer, which also reflects the real world.

roger

Tom, thank you for that suggestion! I will try it (since I have the old FI still around in Quicken). I probably messed it all up myself by not deleting the initial downloaded transactions (which was about 1 year ago).