Treasury bill purchase inflating market value by 100X

RobertBetka
RobertBetka Quicken Mac Subscription Member
edited August 2023 in Investing (Mac)

I purchased $49,843 of zero coupon 6 month T-Bills in December 2022. In the Dashboard and Portfolio views of the account, the bonds are also reflected at 100X value. When I run the standard Net Worth report, it shows the market value of these bonds as $4,983,300. My monthly net worth report also shows this inflated value until the bonds matured in June 2023, at which time the value of the holding reverted to the correct value of $50,000.

The purchase transaction also created a transaction dated in 2016 of a purchase of this exact security of 49,500 shares (100X the actual amount); this fictitious transaction seems to be causing the inflated value, but I can't get rid of it.

Can someone help me resolve this issue?

Comments

  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    I have just discovered this same problem, and it seems to apply to every one of the Treasury bonds my financial advisor just purchased for my investment account. The security itself shows a Quote/Price value exactly 10 times the actual purchase value. Oddly, the lot (only one) for each of them instead shows a Quote/Price value correctly. But, of course, the inflated value takes precedence, and my net worth calculations are wildly incorrect! I would appreciate it if someone can suggest some kind of workaround for the problem.🤔

  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    Followup: I am running Windows 10 and Quicken Deluxe with latest updates.

  • UKR
    UKR Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    Did you follow these instructions when entering the Bonds Bought transaction?
    https://help.quicken.com/display/MAC/Buying+bonds

    In the Security List, is the Security Type for these bonds set to Type = Bonds?

  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    edited July 2023

    for @prwilliams38 - this discussion is posted in the MAC area of the forum and comments may or may not apply to your WINDOWS version and your questions…

  • jacobs
    jacobs Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    It should be easy to modify the purchase transactions to reflect a price 1/100th what you currently have entered. The price for bonds should be the price per $100, and I suspect you have the price per $1 purchased.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    Thanks for the quick responses! The problem, however, does not seem to be that simple. Here's what happens when I edit one of these:

    When I Enter/Done, I let it compute the Price, then look at the resulting entry:

    Notice the number of shares is now 500,000. And here's what it looks like now in Holdings:

    Though the Cost Basis is correct, this Market Value makes a mockery of my Net Worth!

    Please tell me what I am doing wrong. And thanks again for your responses.

  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭

    the Quote Price …

  • William B.
    William B. Member ✭✭

    I am having an identical problem with my US Treasury holdings. I am running Quicken for Mac 7.1.1.

  • WreckDiver1
    WreckDiver1 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    Joining the group here with similar issues.

    I have been running my self CRAZY trying to get this to work.

    I am manually setting up a treasury ladder. Manually because I just got the login information for Wealthscape, after finding out that they did have a Quicken Link….regardless, since they only send the last 90 days, I need to setup the initial transactions (only a few months).

    I am trying to use the statements, but NOTHING works. Numbers here are hypothetical
    STATEMENT SAYS:
    BOUGHT:
    QTY: 50,000
    PRICE: $10
    PRINCIPAL AMOUNT: 5,000
    There is some accrued interest, commission and fees.

    If I enter that data into Quicken, I get a number of $5,000,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I noticed that the "Price" was "Base 100" so I made a leap and said "OH, maybe each share is actually 1/100 of the price. Put in $0.10 (the $10/100) for the price, and it drops the Total Cost to $50,000….still a factor of 10 too high. So Now I adjust the number of bonds to 5,000 , and it gives me the correct number.

    There is no way this is correct. NO WAY!. First the price is a factor of 100 drop, and the shares is a factor of 10. That makes ZERO sense, but the numbers work in the end for Total Market value.

    I know this isn't right, but I'm pulling my hair out on entering this stuff. The next issue comes when I link that investment account with Wealthscape. Qicken states that my Quicken Share Balance is not the same as what Wealthscape reports (Wealthscape states "500" even though their own transaction data states 50,000). If I attempt to 'fix' this my Total Market Value changes by a either a factor of 100 or 1000 (I can't remember).

    What in the world am I doing wrong?
    BTW: Per the instructions in the link that was provided by @UKR, I am confused at:
    Face Value - Enter the face value (par value) of the bonds purchased.
    Price
     - Enter the price per $100.

    First, this is a Treasury ladder, so it's not an I-Bond or EE-Bond, etc. I get a "QUANTITY" and "PRICE"
    I don't understand "PRICE - Enter the price per $100". Entering a "price per $100" wouldn't be a price as you have PRICE/PRICE which cancels out the "$" unit and the result is unitless (just a number).

    Sorry if this is confusing, I am very frustrated, and have spent HOURS trying to figure this out. Seeing others having the exact same issue as I means I'm not alone. Any help??? Again, I am seeing the EXACT same issues as the OP (prwilliams38).

    My issue gets worse when I attempt to bring in the most recent data direct from Wealthscape.

  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    You are so right? Thank you so much for adding your experience. Quicken Support, where are you??

  • jacobs
    jacobs Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    Quicken Support, where are you??

    @prwilliams38 This site is not Quicken Support. You can call them (during the week) or use text chat to contact them; just click the Support link at the top of the page.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    Are we to assume Quicken Support doesn't pay any attention to this forum? Just asking,,,,

  • jacobs
    jacobs Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    Correct, Quicken Support team members are not reading this forum. There are a handful of Quicken moderators here, who help answer some of the questions which come up — but they don't have the same way to interactively work with customers that a live Support representative does.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    I just got off the phone with Quicken Support. I believe they have given me the answer to our problems. Apparently these entries were, due to some kind of glitch, being flagged as type "Bond." The workaround is to go to "Tools" on your main menu, select "Security list" and find the securities that are mislabeled as "Bonds" and change the "Type" in the dropdown menu to "Stock." That seems to do the trick. I am given to understand that this "giitch" has been fixed so this should not happen again.

  • William B.
    William B. Member ✭✭

    I think in my case it may have been something different. A Treasury bond I held matured and Quicken treated it as a "sell" but got the quantity incorrect (by a factor of 100), so it tried to automatically compensate by adding a buy transaction to even things out. I corrected the bond redemption and deleted the automatically created buy transaction.

  • WreckDiver1
    WreckDiver1 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    Interesting, but that really isn't correct. Many Treasury Bonds have pre-loaded interest on them, and that means loading that on a separate interest line. Things still refuse to add up even with this change.

    I'm betting the first time I tried to create my treasury ladder this is exactly what I did, but once the link to Wealthscape was established it screwed it all up because suddenly this is a "BOND" and is treated as such. Quicken will create a new Security, it will be type BOND, and it will totally mess up the entire account. There has to be a better solution than "fudge the numbers"…

  • prwilliams38
    prwilliams38 Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭

    I'm still having problems with these treasuries. Example:

    But when you look at the Holdings view, this is all screwed up.

    That market value comes out to be 100 times the actual value, though cost basis is correct. And notice the two different values for Quote value. This just does not add up! Any thoughts?

This discussion has been closed.