Quicken not seeing overnight cash investment as a security

ccondrich

Merrill Lynch (and I would assume other brokerage institutions) sweep available cash into short term, overnight investment vehicles each night. They are securities and they are priced at 1.0. However ever since moving from Q for PC to Q for Mac the reconciliation does not view these vehicles as securities, rather it lumps them into the total Cash for the account. Am I missing something?

Tom Young

"They are securities and they are priced at 1.0. "

I would argue that these are NOT securities as there's no need to "trade" them, there's no "settlement period."  In fact I believe the cash in sweep funds really IS cash, just cash that earns a higher interest rate.  In fact the money is frequently deposited in and pulled from an actual, distinct "account", generally a bank owned by the same entity that owns the brokerage. 

Having the sweep money presented a cash actually paints a much clearer picture of of your position.  This statement might be most clearly understood in the opposite situation where a "traded" Money Market fund is classified as cash by Quicken.  You might make a Buy thinking, "I have the cash in the account to cover the trade, no need to do anything", and find yourself with a margin loan because you forgot to sell the Money Market fund to cover the trade.

Now it used to be that Windows Quicken allowed you flexibility here, you could treat a traded money market fund as cash and sweep funds as securities.  You'd do that by clicking on Update Cash Balance in the Account and there was a button on the window that came up labeled "Cash Representation."  Clicking that button allowed you to switch, but that button seems to have gone missing. 

The "Help" file has this to say:

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Your brokerage may use a money market fund to represent the cash balance in this account

Do you want to track your cash balance as cash balance or as shares of a money market fund security?

• (Recommended) If you want to track the performance of your cash equivalents, choose Convert this fund into my cash balance. You can make simple cash transactions and easily track the cash balance of your investment account. In the background, Quicken will track the associated money market fund for you and calculate performance based on Dividend and Interest transactions.
• If you prefer to enter money market fund transactions manually, choose Track it as a security. Your financial institution may download a Buy or Sell transaction of your money market fund for every transaction that increases or decreases your cash balance, respectively.

Notes

• The option to track money market shares as cash isn't available for all financial institutions. For more information about availability, as well as other information about tracking cash in an investment account, see Deciding how to track cash in an investment account.
• If the option to track a money market fund as a security is available for your financial institution, and you initially choose to track the money market fund as a security, you can convert the fund to cash later. However, once you select to convert a money market fund to cash, you may not be able to convert it back to a money market fund later.

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That's not entirely clear, to me.