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Latest Investment Analysis Features Available in Quicken Desktop for Windows

eqpu

Hi,

I am visiting this site after a few years this time around.

For some time, I tried to log into the old site and also log into the new site with my existing email address but it always gave errors. Finally, I created a "new" account on this site with same email address used on old site and found that all my old posts are available here. So, finally I found my way to the new site.

Coming to the point now, I am using Quicken 2012 Premier (yes, that is correct) on a Windows machine.

I have actually purchased few versions after Quicken 2012 Premier and that too higher versions of Quicken namely Home and Business for both 2013 and 2015 but had not installed them nor did I purchase any versions after 2015 as I am happy with what I have and they do not provide anything more that what is already available in Quicken 2012 Premier for my purposes. I can readily buy a new version or a subscription if some of the major features from below mentioned are available in the latest version without disrupting anything that is working currently in Quicken 2012 Premier.

The full discussion from that time and I feel a useful constructive one is available at

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7875440/saved-reports-how-to-have-investment-reports-show-exclude-only-closed-lots

I am repeating the major points from my suggestions given previously over the years. I want to know if any of the below are available in the latest version of Quicken desktop for Windows.

I am talking of Quicken 2012 Premier and mostly about investment related features. I feel it is still same in ALL LATER VERSIONS TILL TODAY for majority of the below features. This feeling is also based on my interactions with Quicken Support at the time of most new releases till 2015.

Although there are numerous improvements in Quicken Desktop in various other areas, investment related features have seen only cosmetic changes.

Some of the major features that I am missing from Quicken Desktop and am either doing without or have found some workaround are mentioned below.

SAVED REPORTS
Cannot see Closed/Open lots (Fully Sold/Held securities) AUTOMATICALLY. I have to manually select securities fitting these criteria in saved reports.
Cannot use Absolute Gain/Loss or ROI% as a field for display.
Cannot even sort on ARR (or some other fields) to find best or worst performing investments quickly. I have to manually go through report to figure out.

INVESTMENT PORTFOLIO VIEW
Shows absolute gain/loss and ROI but I cannot use average annualized return for ALL dates. I can use ARR only for a specific number of years.
Number of custom views can be increased for Investment Portfolio View.

OTHERS
No support for using Tags for investment transactions. Tags can be very useful for customizing investment reports like it is for other spending reports.
Increase in number of Investing Goals allowed.
No support for Midcap asset class. Only Small and Large Caps. Quicken mentions in its Help File that mid cap is not supported and also gives reason for doing so.
No support for asset classes like Commodities, Currencies, Gold etc.
Setting High and Low alerts for each stock which could be triggered to remind the investor that it might be time to sell/buy the specific stock. This is similar to the other alerts which remind users when account balances go over or under a specified limit.
No support for downloading international stock prices from other exchanges. Quicken does allow using multiple currencies but does not support downloading stock prices from other exchanges.
No support for margin transactions (mostly will be useful for traders only).

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Comments

Jim_Harman

I will take a shot at giving the current status of the issues you raise above.

Open/closed lots - You can see these in an Investing > Portfolio view grouped by account. Click on the Options gear and select Show closed lots, then click on the + sign next to a security or click on Expand All

Avg Annual Return - In Portfolio views, still only YTD, 1-, 3-, and 5 year. In Investment Performance report, can select any date range.

Tags in Investing reports - can use Tags for cash transactions in investing accounts; the Banking Transaction report and Spending reports include these.

Asset classes - In addition to the traditional ones, there are now 10 user definable ones, Including Crypto and Alternative, but only the traditional ones are downloaded. Still no Midcap, Small and mid are combined into Small.

The other items are still not implemented AFAIK.

q_lurker

A) I converted your reference to the prior discussion to an active link to make it easier to get to that prior, somewhat extensive discussion.

Beyond that, I have to say nothing much or of significance to you has changed. The Show views of portfolio views has increased to 28; helpful but not a game changer. There is a new Income by security report.

And while I’d love to see improvements in the customization of securities for reports and views, your interest in currently held versus previously held would never hit my list. Quicken has to ask themselves - how many users would find xx helpful? I just don’t see it for your major points.

eqpu

Open/closed lots - You can see these in an Investing > Portfolio view grouped by account. Click on the Options gear and select Show closed lots, then click on the + sign next to a security or click on Expand All

Show Closed Lots is available in Investing Portfolio view. It is not available to be used in saved investment performance reports.

Avg Annual Return - In Portfolio views, still only YTD, !-, 3-, and 5 year. In Investment Performance report, can select any date range.

Avg Annual Return not available in Investment Portfolio view and Absolute Percentage Return not available in saved or customized reports.

Both of these should have been available in both the Investment Portfolio view and Saved or Customized Investment Reports.

Tags in Investing reports - can use Tags for cash transactions in investing accounts; the Banking Transaction report and Spending reports include these.

Any idea on why tags not available for investment transactions but are available only for spending or cash transactions.

I cannot even come with a rational guess for this omission.

Rocket J Squirrel

@eqpu

Any idea on why tags not available for investment transactions but are available only for spending or cash transactions.

If an investment transaction can be assigned a category, it can also be assigned a tag. You have to use the old Category/Tag notation in the Category field. The tag may appear to vanish in the dialog, but it generally will attach properly. Image below is from a brokerage account from which I paid estimated tax.

As for "idea on why", it's a design omission not to have Tag fields in investment transaction dialogs. A long time ago, I posted an Idea that every transaction which has a Category field in its Edit dialog should also have a Tag field. That Idea seems to have expired; I can no longer find it.

q_lurker

Any idea on why tags not available for investment transactions but are available only for spending or cash transactions.
I cannot even come with a rational guess for this omission.

You explained more in your prior post post from 2020:

Also, if I had an ability to TAG INVESTMENT TRANSACTIONS,

I could e.g. tag the following transactions to include or exclude them from the reports to get a better handle on my investments. I have not found any workaround or way to do this as of now.

For Mutual Fund transactions, there are times when I purchase in a Lump-sum manner vs that through Automatic/Systematic Investment Plan (SIP) which gets triggered every month. I can find performance of Lump-sum vs SIP separately.
For Stocks and Mutual Fund transactions, …
For Certificate of Deposits, …

What you are really describing here and in the subsequent comments is a tag (or some kind of textual attribute) assigned to a specific lot of a specific security. That is far afield from assigning a tag to a cash transaction such that it would require (as I see it) an alteration to structural database of the investment portion of the program. From there, the various reporting mechanisms would need to be developed. I don't see Quicken undertaking such a risky process. (Risky in the sense that the heart of the investment module was structured literally decade ago and any changes could create an avalanche of unintended consequences.)

Consider further, you tag a December 2019 purchase with tag A, and a January 2020 with tag B. The February 2020 dividend now needs to be split (at least within reporting mechanisms) among the various 'tags'. If that dividend is also a reinvestment, the nesting effect gets even deeper and further compounds. Toss in shares bought or sold after the ex-div date but before the div payment date - it gets further complicated to follow and manage. Oh, did that security generate a corporate spinoff? Yes, computers are good at complicated tasks but that starts with good programmers recognizing all the contingencies.

Jim_Harman

Avg Annual Return not available in Investment Portfolio view

The data may not show performance only for securities you no longer own or for user-specified time periods, but the Avg Annual Return (IRR) columns are definitely available in the Portfolio views. This is the same calculation that is done in the Investment Performance Report.

eqpu

As for "idea on why", it's a design omission not to have Tag fields in investment transaction dialogs.

It indeed is a design omission and a big one at that. As you rightly mentioned, it is indeed very Risky in the sense that the heart of the investment module was structured literally decade ago and any changes could create an avalanche of unintended consequences.

eqpu

the Avg Annual Return (IRR) columns are definitely available in the Portfolio views

It is available but only for YTD, 1, 3, 5 years. All Dates is not available. At the very least even if date range is not available, all dates should have been included along with YTD, 1, 3 and 5 years.

On the other hand, Absolute Percentage Return is not available in saved or customized reports and it is available in Investment Portfolio Views.

Jim_Harman

On the other hand, Absolute Percentage Return is not available in saved or customized reports and it is available in Investment Portfolio Views.

There are lots of columns that are available in the Portfolio views but not in any of the reports.

If you want to print portfolio view data, you can set up the view the way you want it then go to File > Print portfolio or hit Ctrl-P. To copy to the clipboard or export to Excel, there is now an Export button at the top right of the view.