Asset Allocation for Canadian users

mark16

I'm not convinced that the asset allocation table in the investing dashboard is prepared from a Canadian investor's perspective, yet I am Canadian, and am using Quicken's Canadian version. I'd like to confirm the definitions of "domestic" and "international" used by Quicken in creating this table.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @mark16,

To assist with this issue, please provide more information. Are you seeing something that makes it appear these terms are not correct? If you are, could you please provide specific examples of what you're seeing?

I look forward to your reply!

mark16

The Quicken amounts do not tie to the amounts on my bank investment statements and the definitions in the Quicken help guide say are US-based.

jacobs

@mark16 The Asset Allocation of each security is downloaded from Quicken's security prices supplier. My assumption would be that if you have securities which are listed on a US stock exchange, "domestic" would mean US and "international" would be non-US. I don't know, but I don't think they have a different data provider for users in Canada. I'm not even sure how that would work, since Quicken Mac can be set to US, Canada or both; if I user selects to use both, how would Quicken determine whether "domestic" refers to US or Canada?

That said, you have the ability to change the asset allocation of each security if you want it categorized differently than what Quicken's supplier provides. So if you want a US company like Apple to be "International Stocks", you can make that change in the Securities window. Or if you simply don't like how Quicken's supplier categorizes a security, you can change it. For example, some people don't like seeing a money market fund represented as an asset mix — Schwab's SWVXX shows as 99% Cash, 0.9% Domestic Bond, and 0.1% Unclassified — and manually set it to be 100% Cash.

Chris_QPW

Personally, I wouldn't rely that much on these allocation groups. There isn't really a standard for what groups there are, and which securities are in each. One of the main reasons that there was a call for customizing the groups in Quicken Windows was because the groups that the provider uses and are the defaults in Quicken are the "broadest" that you can think of, and don't really line up with say a broker's groups.

EDIT: I also agree with @jacobs even in Quicken Windows where the code is more "separated" I don't believe they get any difference in the information provided. One can be in the US version and still get the same quotes for Canadian securities by prefixing the security symbol with the exchange "symbol". This the same as would be done in the Canadian version.

jacobs

@Chris_QPW Keep in mind that in Quicken Mac, users cannot customize their asset classes as they can in Quicken Windows. That is, we're stuck with only the 7 classes of Large Cap Stocks, Small Cap Stocks, International Stocks, Domestic Bonds, International Bonds, Cash or Money Market. The Mac development team has marked custom asset classes as a "Planned" feature coming sometime in the future.

Chris_QPW

@jacobs yes, I'm aware of that. I was just pointing out the fact that it is a "fundamental" problem that really isn't going to be fixed by "use a different quote provider/feed", and that is one of the main reasons for the call for more flexibility in Quicken to make up for that fact.