Historic Performance report
Amount invested minus Market value is considerably different than Gain/Loss. Shouldn't they be similar if not exact?
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Not sure why yours don't, but mine do:
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Note that Amount Invested may not be the same as Cost Basis. Gain/Loss works off of Cost basis, not Amount Invested.
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Not Cost Basis. Amount Invested. Click on "investing". Then"portfolio". Then Select "historic Performance" Select Customize and You will find a column selection as Amount invested. Very different than Cos Basis. My cost basis comes out fine also.
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As explained, Amount Invested and Cost basis aren't the same thing, and the Gains/Loss uses the Cost Basis.
Sounds about the same, but it isn't. For instance, if you have Group by Accounts selected:
This is of a closed account:
The $67,900.62 is the total amount that I ever invested in the security VANGUARD 500 INDEX in that account, not the current cost of the current shares held in that account.
EDIT: I think that "Amount Invested" is one of them most misunderstood fields in Quicken's tracking of securities, and it is used in the calculation of "Return", which in turn make those the "second most" misunderstood fields.
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Thank you Chris! You're right! I really don't understand what "Amount invested" entails. The "Amount Invested" is considerably greater than the "Market Value" which is what drew my attention. "Amount invested" and "Cost Basis" intuitively sounds like it should be the same. It obviously is not. The definition provided when you hold the cursor over "Amount Invested" really doesn't provide much help. I will check out your web site. I was also wondering if you have any recommendations for reference material that provides information in more detail on Quicken. I'm running Quicken Premier R 51.12 for Windows. Thanks again for your time and explanation!
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To understand Amount Invested, consider this sequence:
- Buy $1000 of Apple
- Sell half the shares for a nice profit
- Buy another $1000 worth when the price drops
- Sell some more shares for a profit
- Buy a third lot for $1000
All told across that time span, you have invested $3,000 (Amount Invested). You have gotten back dividends, profits (realized capital gains), and increased market value (unrealized gains). Your Amount Invested is greater than your cost basis because it is not adjusted downward for each sale it is not what you have invested in your current shares.
A second scenario:
- Buy $1000 of a mutual fund
- Over time reinvest all dividends and cap gain distributions, each of which increases your cost basis.
Your Amount Invested remains $1000 which is less than your cost basis. Consistent with the first scenario, that remains the Amount invested even if some shares are sold.
[There is some conversation that Amount Invested will be reset to $0 if you sell all the shares. I have not seen that consistently, but maybe on occasion. Perhaps all shares of the security in all accounts need to be sold to trigger the reset.]
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I was also wondering if you have any recommendations for reference material that provides information in more detail on Quicken.
At one point there was a Glossary in the in-product Help was very useful. It's too bad it was lost when they reorganized the Help and moved it mostly online.
Some of the former Glossary content is now at the links below.
The second link identifies the source of each of the data points.
This information is mostly correct, but but there are errors in it. For example, all of the Return (%) values, not just YTD, are based on downloaded data and do not change if you change the As of date. I have tried to get Quicken to correct this, with no success so far.
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q_lurker and Jim Harmon…Thank you so much. Very informative and answered my questions in a clear and concise manner. Kudos to you both!
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