Issue with updating Mutual Fund historical prices
I have the following issue with Mutual Funds and adding securities in general.
My first issue is I can not get historical prices for any of my Mutual Funds. While I can setup securities and add them to an Investment account, I can not get them to appear in the "Get Historical Prices" window, they will not update. I have tried everything I can think of and spent 3 hours on the phone with Tech Support only to be told that there is nothing they can do. (Imagine that, their product does not work and there is nothing they can do about it.) I have tried every kind of permutation and combination of adding the Mutual Fund but nothing worked to enable the Historical Price Update to download the historical prices. The Tech on the phone tried it on his Quicken with out a problem. He used one of my Mutual Fund symbols and got the Mutual Fund added to his security list and was able to get historical prices without a problem, but he was using the US Version of Quicken and I am using the Canadian Version.
My Security list looks like this:
The update window looks like this:
As you can see, none of my Mutual Funds are listed for update.
My second issue with Quicken is that there are too many options when setting up a Mutual Fund as a security. In order to try to fix the issue above I tried every permutation and combination of options just incase I was doing something wrong when setting up the Mutual Fund. Here is an example of the window looks like to set up a Mutual Fund:
There are dropdown selections for Security Type, Exchange, and Currency and I have tried every one of the options. This particular Mutual Fund is a Bank of Montreal Asset Allocation Fund, but it does not matter what Mutual Fund I select, for Instance I selected a ManuLife Mutual Fund to test this out and it behaves the same. Does anyone out there know the correct settings for a Mutual Fund? I think it should be like this with the type as Mutual Fund and the Exchange as Mutual Funds.:
But as I said before, it does not matter what those options are set to, I do not get the Historical Pricing.
Does anyone have a solution to these problems?
System:
Quicken Version: R52.28 Canadian version. This is a classic desktop version.
Windows 11 PRO
Comments
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The Get Historical Prices feature does not work for mutual funds, at least not Canadian Mutual Funds. You are attempting to use a feature that doesn't exist. Get Historical Prices does work for stocks and ETFs.
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Get Historical Prices for mutual funds including Canadian mutual funds does work. It works in the US version (which I have on my other computer and have used for over 20 years to track the mutual funds in my RRSPs before moving back to Canada) and I have just now discovered how to get the historical prices in the Canadian version. In order for you to Get Historical Prices for mutual funds you need to go into the Edit Details of the mutual fund and select US Stock as the Exchange. When you change the Exchange you will be asked if you want to copy your price history or delete it. I deleted the price history. Also, make sure you have the correct currency selected in the mutual fund details. Then, make sure you have Watch List checked in the Securities List for the mutual funds of interest. Now when you select Get Historical Prices, the mutual funds appear in the list and will be updated just like stocks. I am going to up date my discussion with some screen shots so others can follow if they are having problems with mutual funds.
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It is entirely bizarre and non-intuitive that setting the exchange to US Stocks would fetch historical prices for Canadian mutual funds. Does One-Step-Update fetch the new, current prices for the same mutual funds if the exchange is left set to US Stock? I've always used the "Mutual Fund" exchange setting and that has enabled me to get the MF price updates via OSU. In other words, are there any downsides or negative consequences to selecting the "US Stock" exchange for Canadian mutual funds?
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"It is entirely bizarre and non-intuitive" That's an understatement.
You asked "Does One-Step-Update fetch the new, current prices for the same mutual funds if the exchange is left set to US Stock?" The way I update pricing is I go to the "INVESTING" tab and click the "Update" and select "Historical Prices" from the dropdown list. That is the way I did it in the US version and so I just continued to do it in the Canadian version. I checked the pricing that I got from the "Update" against the historic pricing I downloaded from the Globe and Mail for a couple of my mutual funds and they match down to the 3rd decimal place (the odd time the fourth decimal place is off by one). The pricing is current and correct and in Canadian currency.
You stated that "I've always used the "Mutual Fund" exchange setting and that has enabled me to get the MF price updates via OSU." I don't follow if OSU means One Step Update. How do you get the MF pricing with OSU? Does your investment brokerage provide Quicken connections? I do not get any MF pricing no matter if I use OSU or "Update" in the "INVESTING" tab if I leave the Exchange as "Mutual Fund". I can only get Historic Pricing if I select US Stock as the Exchange. I am working with BMO Investorline and they do not support Quicken. I wished I had known that before I moved everything over to them because I have to manually enter in all the transactions for all my investments in all of my accounts.
You also ask "In other words, are there any downsides or negative consequences to selecting the "US Stock" exchange for Canadian mutual funds?" As I stated above, when I was using the US version of Quicken it behaved slightly differently than the Canadian version but I believe that it automatically selected US Stock as the Exchange. This was kind of confirmed when I spoke with the Quicken Tech who only had a US version to work with. I gave him the BMO95144 mutual fund for him to enter in his version and he had no problem adding it and getting all the historical pricing. That makes sense since it was working for me in my US version. But what didn't make sense was to select US Stock as an Exchange for Canadian Mutual Funds in the Canadian version of Quicken. Also, the Tech never suggested to do that. BUT, if you are already getting daily MF pricing through your OSU then I would not change it to the US Stock Exchange. Changing could be disastrous knowing how Quicken likes to give us users surprises. If you wanted to try this method I would highly recommend creating a "Tinkering" Quicken file where you can play around with different scenarios.
So I have not yet figured out how to edit or update my posts in Community but when I do I will update with screenshots. Actually, I just now found out that I can only edit a post that is no more then 1 day old.
In the mean time, I tripped over this solution because I was trying to remember how I got the mutual fund pricing in my US version of Quicken. The best I can remember (and also from my conversation with tech support) the US version does not have an option for selecting 'Exchange' when you set up a mutual fund. So in the Canadian version I just tried setting that to US Stock and poof it worked. I got the daily pricing for the last 3 to 4 weeks and then one price a week for the previous 5 years (or since the fund was created).
Also, if you don't want to select US Stock as the Exchange, there is one more way to update prices, but it will only update the last 3 to 4 weeks. Open the security Detail View. It should look something like this:
Click the update button and it will update the prices for the prior 3 to 4 weeks. I already set my mutual funds to the US Stock exchange and that is why you see prices for this the BMO fund back to October 2019 which is when it was created.
The Security Details for this MF are:
Here is an example of historical prices for a different mutual fund I track:
You can see prices all the way back to 2018.
This is what the Security Details look like for this MF:
You can see that it is in Canadian Dollars and getting updates from the US Stock Exchange.
The next thing I need to figure out is how to import pricing from a CSV or a text file since I have 20 years of daily history for all of my investments on my US Quicken. My US Quicken is on a different computer that is still in storage. Once I get that computer out of storage and setup I will look into how to get the pricing copied over to my Canadian Quicken.
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Firstly, to be clear, I have only used and know the Canadian version of Quicken, so everything I say about Quicken pertains to the Canadian version and I don't pertain to have any knowledge of how the US version works.
Here is how one sets these up to get prices using One Step Update. Note that the price history you see below is entirely from running One Step Update (OSU) only once - yes, it fetches the prices since the start of this calendar year.
BMO Canadian Equity ETF Fund Series F -(BMO95144.CF)
And, for Manulife U.S. All Cap Equity Fund Series F C$ -Instrument Symbol (MMF4615.CF)
Again, I get the price history dating back to the beginning of the calendar year.
Note that I set up a test/scratch Quicken file to demonstrate this to you. The screen shots are of the test file.
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Thanks for showing me that. I started a new Quicken file again to test if I can get prices using OSU like you have shown. I now get a different result than I got with my live file and the prior "Tinkering" file, but I still don't get what you have. I do get pricing updated by OSU but only 3 to 4 weeks of pricing:
I have no idea why I don't get at least a year of pricing like you do.
I am using Quicken Classic Deluxe R52.28
Windows 11 Pro
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Try "buying" a unit of the security, delete all the historical prices, and then try OSU. I found that the result was a bit finicky. One time when I added it, the full calendar year of pricing came in. The other time only 3 weeks, but when I purchased a unit of the security before doing the OSU I then got the full year of prices - I'm not sure if that was a coincidence. I think, if you play around with this a bit, you'll get the year of price history and then you can use OSU to keep it current, which is more convenient than what you have been doing.
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I just bought a share of a MF, deleted the price history then did a OSU and I still only get 3 weeks of pricing.
But the method I that I have used is actually what is recommended by Quicken on their help site:
To download historical security prices
- Click the Investing tab.
- Click the Update button and choose Historical Prices.
- Select the securities that you want historical data for.
- Select the time span you want data for from the drop-down list. You can download data for the past month, the past year, the past two years, or the past five years.
- Click Update Now.
The issue I had in this Canadian version was what Exchange I needed to specify in order to get the pricing.
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As mentioned, the process seems to be a bit finicky. The first time I did this I got the year-to-date results. With the second ticker, I got only 3 weeks of historical prices. Then I redid the second ticker and then got the full year-to-date of historical prices.. You might have to play around with this a bit to figure out what nuisance makes the difference between three weeks and calendar-year-to-date price history results. I followed what I thought was the same process the first two attempts and got different results. I must have done something different, but I'm not sure what. I believe I did delete the three weeks of prices after purchasing a unit of the security and before running OSU, but I'm not sure that is what made the difference - just one guess.
As an aside, some time ago I came to the conclusion that - for most purposes - investment history wasn't that useful or important to me. I did not reach that conclusion easily as I have the kind of personality that would naturally want the history - in full accuracy. Nonetheless, after much pondering, I grudgingly came to the conclusion that an accurate current state view and forward looking analysis are what matters more (to me). Hence, I'm not fussed much about what I can obtain for historical prices. I ended up concluding - for my purposes (yours may differ) - that all the historical stuff was nice to have, not necessary to have.
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I have spent more time testing out how this works using some tinkering files and here is what I see. Firstly, I really need to know the performance of my portfolio and therefore need the historical pricing. It's just that Quicken's source for the historical pricing seems to be the US Stock Exchange. The pricing Quicken gets from that Exchange looks correct when I check it against the Globe And Mail Historical pricing. In the MFs that I set to Mutual Fund Exchange I can't get the price history beyond the 3 weeks. Also, setting the Exchange to US Stock will still update the pricing when you do an OSU. So I will set the exchange to US Stock and get the maximum history using the "Download Historical Prices" procedure recommended by Quicken and then get the current pricing through the OSU as I update my transactions.
I found out that in order to get pricing for securities that you are watching and don't own, you need to check the "Watch List" column in the Security List.
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Yes, but evidently there is also something different in what we are doing because I get year-to-date. And, I do get historical performance starting from purchase date or earlier… I just don't try to go back further. i.e. I can see performance of my portfolio but not performance of the securities in my portfolio from well before I first purchased the security… if that makes sense.
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Thanks for sharing your research on getting Canadian Mutual Fund historical prices and keeping them updated with One Step Update. It is very helpful. Getting Canadian historical mutual fund prices has been a problem for as long as I can remember. I suspect that Quicken is trying to integrate US and Canadian versions to simplify support and updates going forward and is using US databases that have access to Canadian information.
It's good to have someone with experience with the US version now using the Canadian version and giving us feedback.
I haven't tried it yet, but will give it a go with the "US Exchange" setting and report back. I also find it valuable to have access to historical data within Quicken for funds I have just purchased, without always having to go to external sites for that info.
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"but evidently there is also something different in what we are doing" Are we using the same version of the Canadian software? I am using the desktop version Quicken Classic Deluxe R52.28 and I am saving my files to my HD and not online.
This has been exhausting but I think I now have a way to keep pricing current and also be able to do my analysis.
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I'm glad someone found this discussion useful. You said "I haven't tried it yet, but will give it a go with the "US Exchange" setting". I highly recommend you start off with a tinker file before implementing it in your live file. What I did first was make a complete copy of my live file and called it TINKER. I then went about adding new Mutual Funds and seeing what would happen. It's a good thing that I did because I accidently blew away a security.
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