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Need to adjust gain/ Loss column amounts in money market accounts

Dennis4@

This is so frustrating, a few of my money market accounts show a loss which is not true. I would love to correct them by simply zero out the loss. As we know I can't delete that investment because it won't let me due to transactions associated with that cash account. I went though the years of transactions to try to find where this happened and each transaction is correct and attached to a purchase, sale or withdrawal. Why wouldn't Quicken give use this option as it does with the cash in each account? Its our money, our accounts, we should have control to adjust what we want. This is personal, not legal. Thanks, Dennis

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Boatnmaniac

Many investment companies use a MMF as a replacement to the traditional bank Sweep Account for holding account cash. Some of those investment companies (such as Fidelity Investments) will not download shares of that sweep MMF into Quicken but will instead download it as Cash Balance.

If your MMF is one of these that is used as a alternative to the traditional Sweep Account, then you will need to stop trying to track the MMF in Quicken and do some account transactions cleanup to get everything back into balance, again. You can read up on the process for doing this in this thread: Downloads from Fidelity do not included activity into the settlement fund.

BTW, this is not a Quicken issue. Each financial institution decides which data it will download into Quicken. Those investment companies that do not download their sweep MMF transactions into Quicken have decided to do it that way. In the case of Fidelity, they have been doing it this way since before 2008.

Does this appear to be the issue you are experiencing?

If not, would you provide more detail regarding your issue, perhaps providing a couple of examples of your observation?

Dennis4@

I believe that is not my issue. I am not sure why my money markets show a loss. All the balances are correct however, in the gain/loss column, it shows a loss. The only time that I use the money market is buying, selling well, withdrawing money out of my Vanguard or Fidelity account. When I looked at the history for many years, I do not see why I should have a loss. Is it simply that when I withdrew money from the money market account it took it as a loss?

Jim_Harman

Go to the Security Detail page for the money Market fund, click on More, and select Edit Price History

Are there any entries where the share price is not $1.00? Sometimes Quicken downloads a price of 0 for these funds.

If so, you can safely delete these entries because a MMF share price should always be $1.00

To avoid this, you can make sure the last entry is 1.00, then go to Tools > Security List, select each money market fund and un-check the Download Quotes box.

Dennis4@

I went through the years of transactions with that security(money market) wherever there was a blank or other that $1, I changed it to $1. So now my loss went from 16k to 45k. Amount invested is way way off causing this loss. How can I change amount invested or simply correct that number?

NotACPA

A MMF should ALWAYS have a price per share of $1.00. Delete all quotes that are contrary to this.

Boatnmaniac

Are you downloading transactions from Fidelity and Vanguard or are you manually managing those accounts?

If you are manually managing those accounts in Quicken, then I agree with you that my prior post in this thread likely does not apply to you.

But if you are downloading from then I suggest we do a little more of a deep dive into what you are seeing in Quicken before dismissing it. Let's focus on Fidelity first since I am very familiar with how Fidelity works with Quicken.

What is the ticker for the MMF in question?
Log into your Fidelity online account and click on the Positions tab. The very first item listed with the new Fidelity webpage should show "Cash". Click on that. Does it show a MMF and is it the same MMF per #1? (In the old Fidelity webpage it would show the MMF ticker with two asterisks…ex., SPAXX**…instead of "Cash". And Fidelity would refer to it as the Core Account or Core Position.)
Does the "Cash" amount or MMF share value match what you are holding in Quicken?
At the bottom right corner of the account in Quicken: Click on the Cash Balance. You will get a popup comparing your Cash Balance in Quicken to the Cash Balance reported by Fidelity. Are they the same or different? Make note of any difference.
In the account register, click on the upper right Gear icon and then click on Reconcile Shares. What happens?

Post your answers to the above and we can then take it from there.

NotACPA

Also, when was the last time that you Reconciled the account?; Missing and duplicated transactions could explain the difference.

q_lurker

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20390772#Comment_20390772

Amount Invested has nothing to do with gain/loss calculations. Amount Invested is basically how much you bought over all time with no consideration of what you sold.

Dennis4@

First, I want to apologize, I gave incorrect info, Fidelity accounts are all fine, just the Vanguard cash accounts. I did not delete the transactions other than $1, I edited it to $1., the account I used showed a higher negative profit/ loss and amount invested went up.

I am downloading all my accounts.

My account balance is always correct within a few cents over the years.

My cash balance is aways correct, except with Fidelity because div goes into cash that s/b reinvested, I edit that, and that is fine.

VMRXX is the MM with Vanguard that needs to be adjusted.

When I reconcile my accounts, I log in from my phone and desktop and adjust desktop accordingly I very rarely see a difference more than a few cents.

I believe amount invested has all to do with it as the error I show is profit/loss.

Thanks all.

Dennis

q_lurker

I believe amount invested has all to do with it as the error I show is profit/loss.

Amount Invested is NOT part of gain/loss.

Unrealized Gain/Loss = Market Value - Cost Basis

Example (hypothetical) as it should be:

Day 1 - Buy 100 shares at $1 — Market Value = $100 — Cost Basis = $100 — Amount Invested = $100 — (Unrealized) Gain/Loss = $0
Day 2 - Sell 25 shares at $1 — Market Value = $75 — Cost Basis = $75 — Amount Invested = $100 — (Unrealized) Gain/Loss = $0
Day 3 - Buy 200 shares at $1 — Market Value = $275 — Cost Basis = $275 — Amount Invested = $300 — (Unrealized) Gain/Loss = $0
Day 4 - Sell 150 shares at $1 — Market Value = $125 — Cost Basis = $125 — Amount Invested = $300 — (Unrealized) Gain/Loss = $0

Amount Invested is an accumulation of what you spent buying shares over all time (normally).

If you are seeing Gain/Loss shown in a Portfolio View or Holding view reported as non-zero for a Money Market Fund, I would walk the "As of" date back in time to determine when the value went off the rails. I would then look at transactions on that date, likely deleting and re-entering any questionable or problematic transactions. I would also go the the Validate and Repair protocol.

Dennis4@

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20391002#Comment_20391002

if the amt invested increases and the market value stays the same then the profit will decrease No??

My problem is when changed the blanks or any entry other than a dollar to a dollar the amount invested goes higher

I want to adjust any column that will show 0 profit

Buy low sell high.

Rocket J Squirrel

Forget about Amount Invested. It is not a useful quantity. You should not try to manipulate it.

Dennis4@

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20391007#Comment_20391007

okay. How do I adjust the profit/loss column? Thanks

q_lurker

okay. How do I adjust the profit/loss column? Thanks

The first thing I would do would be to Validate the file. (File — Validate and Repair). That might repair the problem or shed light on it.

Second, I would be changing the "As of" of the portfolio view back in time. Watch how the Market Value and Cost Basis vary, how the Gain/Loss varies. Jump back one month, 3 months, however far is necessary. Presumably somewhere Market Value = Cost Basis and Gain/Loss is zero. What transactions then throw those numbers off? Possibly delete and re-enter those transactions.

That is fixing the problem at the root cause.

Another tool: With the Portfolio View grouped by Account, click the + next to the MM fund security. That will expand to show all lots of that security. See if one or more show a non-zero gain/loss. Then investigate those buys and any possible sales of those lots.

Dennis4@

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20391116#Comment_20391116

thank you for your response. I did the validate and repair no change. Then I loved your idea to go back in history to see where the change was in my quote screen. After spending about two hours going through the years, I was able to correct some errors whereas one date showed a seven dollar quote for a money market. I have more work to do on this to correct more but my back is bothering me now as well as getting a headache. Thank you for the suggestion tomorrow I will open a bottle of wine and do more of it. Lol.