Mutual Fund Price Updates Wrong

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rbknox
rbknox Member ✭✭✭
edited July 2023 in Investing (Windows)

This topic was recently covered here:

As a general policy question, why was this thread closed so quickly? Why are threads closed at all? What's the use in being able to find a discussion covering a problem you are having if you can't join the discussion?

Regarding this problem, it seems that perhaps turning off real time quotes solves the problem. Although, for me, the issue only happens intermittently, i.e. if I get the bogus mutual fund update of $185.19 or similar, the price on the following day will often be correct. So turning off real-time quotes might stop the problem, or it might just be a return to normal quotes that one sees. My fix of course is to delete the bogus entry from the edit history file. I have over 10 such mutual funds which I need to edit every time this happens.

In any case, has the Quicken team been made aware of this problem? Whether it is caused by real time quotes, or not, I would like to see it get fixed.

Thanks,

Comments

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited June 2023
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    Others have reported bogus prices like the $185.19 that you mentioned. It turns out the the price for AAPL today is $186.07. Do you hold AAPL or have it in your Watch List? Or maybe another security that begins with A that has the bogus price?

    I appears that if Real Time Quotes does not see a match on a security, it uses the price for the first ticker symbol alphabetically in your security list.

    See this discussion for more information

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  • rbknox
    rbknox Member ✭✭✭
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    Jim,

    Thanks for the response. Here's my thoughts:

    • I do own Apple (aapl) but I'm not convinced of any correlation with Apple. When I review the price history for Apple, the 185.19 price is not there on any day. What is the reason for suspecting the Apple quote?
    • The assets in my portfolio which are getting the bogus pricing are all mutual funds. But, not all mutual funds are getting bogus prices. Only those which are institutional assets (i.e. a 401k in-house fund) are affected. This might be the "trust" accounts referenced by another user? For me all of these 401k funds happen to be with Fidelity (so this could point to a Fidelity problem). Initially I thought the problem was that it was because mutual funds are not priced real time, i.e they are priced end of day. However, as I say, standard mutual funds that anyone could buy don't seem to be impacted.
    • The names of the institutional mutual funds described above are not related in any way alphabetically to each other, or to aapl

    I will try turning off the Download quotes for the affected funds. This is an interesting distinction. So maybe Quicken's quote provider is inadvertently inserting prices into institutional type funds (where the naming is less clear) by mistake.

    I also saw your comments regarding whether Quicken moderators pick up these problems. Are you reporting these issues to Quicken? It seems to me that your insights should be helping Quicken identify and resolve issues, in addition to providing support to users!

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    I also saw your comments regarding whether Quicken moderators pick up these problems. Are you reporting these issues to Quicken? It seems to me that your insights should be helping Quicken identify and resolve issues, in addition to providing support to users!

    Quicken can't really do much about a problem unless they can observe and replicate it. I report problems when I can see the issue with my own data or a test file, and I encourage users who are experiencing a problem to report it themselves.

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  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    I experimented with this issue in a new test file in QWin Premier R50.8.

    • I created an offline account with 2 securities - AAPL and a fake mutual fund that I called XYZ Fund
    • XYZ Fund has no ticker and Download Quotes is selected.
    • I enabled Real time Quotes
    • Just now, Saturday morning 6/17 while the markets are closed, I went to the account and selected "Update quotes only" from the gear menu
    • Quicken downloaded a price of $184.92 for both securities for 6/16. This is the correct 6/16 closing price for AAPL.
    • IT SHOULD NOT HAVE DOWNLOADED A PRICE FOR THE SECURITY WITH NO TICKER.

    I un-checked Download Quotes for the fake security, deleted the incorrect quote, and updated quotes. The incorrect quote was not downloaded.

    I re-checked Download Quotes for the fake security, un-checked Real time Quotes, and updated quotes. The incorrect quote was not downloaded.

    I re-checked Real time Quotes and updated quotes. The incorrect quote was downloaded again.

    I deleted the AAPL holding and deleted AAPL from the Security List. The incorrect quote was not downloaded.

    I added a holding of Boeing (BA). The quote for Boeing ($219.99) was downloaded for both securities.

    I added AAPL back to the Security List but did not add a holding. The AAPL quote was incorrectly downloaded for the fake fund.

    So the Problem Statement is:

    WHEN REAL TIME QUOTES IS CHECKED, QUICKEN SETS THE QUOTES FOR SECURITIES THAT HAVE DOWNLOAD QUOTES CHECKED BUT NO TICKER TO THE PRICE DOWNLOADED FOR THE FIRST SECURITY IN THE SECURITY LIST.

    A work-around is to un-check Download Quotes for securities that are not publicly traded.

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  • rbknox
    rbknox Member ✭✭✭
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    Not disputing the steps or data Quicken needs to resolve a problem. However, given this is a Quicken-moderated forum, my expectation would be that Quicken is taking advantage of the rich sharing of problem data to get in front of problems with their software. Otherwise, my concern with this forum is that a disproportionate amount of discourse is dealing with workarounds and observations among people who cannot impact a solution. I bet I speak for many Quicken users who would be happier if problems such as these were identified, acknowledged by Quicken and put on a plan list (with as much visibility to the user community as possible), with some sort of commitment to resolution.

  • rbknox
    rbknox Member ✭✭✭
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    I experimented with this issue in a new test file in QWin Premier R50.8.

    I created an offline account with 2 securities - AAPL and a fake mutual fund that I called XYZ Fund

    XYZ Fund has no ticker and Download Quotes is selected.

    I enabled Real time Quotes

    Just now, Saturday morning 6/17 while the markets are closed, I went to the account and selected "Update quotes only" from the gear menu

    Quicken downloaded a price of $184.92 for both securities for 6/16. This is the correct 6/16 closing price for AAPL.

    IT SHOULD NOT HAVE DOWNLOADED A PRICE FOR THE SECURITY WITH NO TICKER.

    I un-checked Download Quotes for the fake security, deleted the incorrect quote, and updated quotes. The incorrect quote was not downloaded.

    I re-checked Download Quotes for the fake security, un-checked Real time Quotes, and updated quotes. The incorrect quote was not downloaded.

    I re-checked Real time Quotes and updated quotes. The incorrect quote was downloaded again.

    I deleted the AAPL holding and deleted AAPL from the Security List. The incorrect quote was not downloaded.

    I added a holding of Boeing (BA). The quote for Boeing ($219.99) was downloaded for both securities.

    I added AAPL back to the Security List but did not add a holding. The AAPL quote was incorrectly downloaded for the fake fund.

    So the Problem Statement is:

    WHEN REAL TIME QUOTES IS CHECKED, QUICKEN SETS THE QUOTES FOR SECURITIES THAT HAVE DOWNLOAD QUOTES CHECKED BUT NO TICKER TO THE PRICE DOWNLOADED FOR THE FIRST SECURITY IN THE SECURITY LIST.

    A work-around is to un-check Download Quotes for securities that are not publicly traded.

    i have not yet tried turning off download quotes for the institutional funds in question. I did turn off real time quotes and all the funds in question updated properly today. However, when I go back into Preferences, real time quotes has been automatically re-enabled. Any reason why this might be the case?

  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    You are right that we would be happier if there were a more direct connection between this forum and the developers' priority list.

    Forum Moderators (those whose user names begin with "Quicken") sometimes review issues discussed here and refer them to Development, but if you want Quicken to work on a problem, I recommend you contact Support via phone.  Be sure the support agent understands the problem and gives you a ticket number for future reference.

    You should also use the Help > Report a Problem menu in Quicken to submit the issue online. In your submission, be as clear and thorough as possible. Reference the ticket number and provide a link to this discussion. Provide step by step instructions to reproduce the problem. You will not get a response to an electronic submission, but they say they review and prioritize the submissions. 

    Since this problem is not flooding the support desk and has a pretty simple workaround - uncheck "Download Quotes" for securities that are not publicly traded - my guess is that it would get a relatively low priority even though it is easy to reproduce and should be easy to fix.

    See the link below for updates on problems that Quicken has acknowledged.

    Quicken never says when a problem is expected to be resolved.

    https://community.quicken.com/categories/alerts

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  • Jim_Harman
    Jim_Harman SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
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    I have not seen the Real time Quotes option being re-enabled as you describe. Please keep an eye on that and let us know if it happens regularly or if you see something that triggers it.

    In the meantime, you can un-check Download Quotes for the affected securities. If the account where the securities are held is set up for downloading, correct price updates should still be available from the brokerage when you update your transactions..

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  • rbknox
    rbknox Member ✭✭✭
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    The bogus quotes problem seems to be happening every update now. So I deselected Download Quotes on the affected funds. That does seem to work.

    Yes, my real-time quotes re-enables itself after each update. Today I deselected it, did a backup and exited from Quicken. Started up again - still deselected. Then I performed an update (this time with Download Quotes turned off on some funds). After the update, real-time quotes is automatically enabled again.

  • rbknox
    rbknox Member ✭✭✭
    Options

    You are right that we would be happier if there were a more direct connection between this forum and the developers' priority list.

    Forum Moderators (those whose user names begin with "Quicken") sometimes review issues discussed here and refer them to Development, but if you want Quicken to work on a problem, I recommend you contact Support via phone.  Be sure the support agent understands the problem and gives you a ticket number for future reference.

    You should also use the Help > Report a Problem menu in Quicken to submit the issue online. In your submission, be as clear and thorough as possible. Reference the ticket number and provide a link to this discussion. Provide step by step instructions to reproduce the problem. You will not get a response to an electronic submission, but they say they review and prioritize the submissions. 

    Since this problem is not flooding the support desk and has a pretty simple workaround - uncheck "Download Quotes" for securities that are not publicly traded - my guess is that it would get a relatively low priority even though it is easy to reproduce and should be easy to fix.

    See the link below for updates on problems that Quicken has acknowledged.

    Quicken never says when a problem is expected to be resolved

    I appreciate that you are trying to do the right thing and that your suggestions are the best one can do given the state of things. Unfortunately I am not so positive. I have been fighting the cloud sync corruption issues for years - by reporting it officially and by interacting with both moderators and users in the forum. To my knowledge the issue has never been resolved — I finally turned off cloud sync sometime last year and am happier for not having it. As far as I'm concerned, no application should put in jeopardy a user's own data file. These recent issues with stock quotes, while not as invasive, sort of reflect the same lack of recognition of what Quicken users value most. I also have had issues with syncing of investment data on Quicken.com and have managed to turn it off as well.

This discussion has been closed.