What does "Ignore prices from broker download" mean?

Patient Zero

I just noticed this checkbox in the Additional Security Information under the Security Detail Page. I've never seen it before; perhaps it is new. I can't find any mention of it in Help.

This may be the solution to the long-time problem of TIPS and (I've read) some amortizing mortgage bonds having incorrect prices reported by Schwab and Vanguard. For my TIPS, I manually enter the month-end price from Treasury Direct, but unless I remember to set the date on my portfolio to that month-end date, the correct prices are overwhelmed by the incorrect prices downloaded from Schwab every day (prices that ignore the inflation factor). So I need to manually go into the Price History for each bond and delete all the downloaded prices, so the price I manually entered can be used to determine the position value. I've never found a way to prevent prices for selected securities from being downloaded from the broker when I do a one-step update.

I'd love for this to be a fix for this problem.

Chris_QPW

I have never seen this before either, and as you said it isn't mentioned in the Help page.

It looks like it would do what you are wanting. I guess trying it and seeing would be the only way to know for sure. I don't have a setup where I could try it.

BTW I was curious of exactly how this is handled for TIPS when this subject was brought up in a Quicken Mac thread, but have never received any replies to that question:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20447896#Comment_20447896

q_lurker

I do not see that selection in R56.9. Could someone post a screenshot of the Security Detail with that selection?

Chris_QPW

@q_lurker here is what it looks like:

Jim_Harman

This unannounced option is present in R58.8 and R58.9.

Congratulations, @Patient Zero you are the first to notice it!

Here is the normal pricing precedence:

1. Manual price entry
2. Current Price (Quote)
3. Historical Price (Quote)
4. Price downloaded with broker data through One Step Update or Update Now
5. Import Price (CSV)
6. Transaction Price entered when manually entering a transaction in the brokerage account list. 

Each entry method overrides the price(s) received by the method just below it. This means that the price displayed after entering a Buy transaction (for example) would be replaced by the price imported from a CSV downloaded from an investing site (such as Yahoo! Finance), which would be replaced by the price transmitted by the broker when performing One Step Update, and so forth.

If no price has been recorded for a given day, Quicken uses the most recent earlier price that it has.

Apparently this option would tell it to ignore prices from #4 above. This would be useful if the quote provider does not provide a quote and the broker's prices are incorrect, which sounds like @Patient Zero's situation.

This issue has been reported several times, for example here

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7923736/correct-accounting-for-tips-in-quicken-partial-solution-but-help-needed

It is nice to see this improvement, but it sure would be nice if new features like this were explained in the Help and highlighted in the Release Notes!

q_lurker

With regard to the post @Jim_Harman referenced, it would seem that user would have wanted the prices from one broker (Fidelity) but not the other (Vanguard). That does not seem to be what this 'fix' is providing.

I can't substantiate this statement, but it seems to me users complain more about the downloaded prices from the Quote provider(s) than they do the brokerage houses. They take a perspective that the brokerage information is accurate and Quicken is wrong.

Tom Young

Here's a GNMA bond listed at Schwab:

Normally with a bond you'd take the number of $1,000 bonds with a quote of 103.19514 and come up with a value of $1,031.9514 for the bond, and I expect this is what most people see in their downloads. But here you have to take that $1,031.9514 and multiply it by the "factor" of 0.91447156 resulting in a value of $943.69. In this case the factor represents the remaining percentage of the original pool of loan's principal.

With a TIP the "factor" is an inflation index that works in the opposite direction of a mortgage backed bond in that your principal is increasing with inflation.

Chris_QPW

@Tom Young from what I understand of your statement, it is possible for the correct information to be downloaded (as in Quicken does have a security action type for it and you have seen it downloaded correctly), but some financial institutions aren't doing this correctly. Do I have the situation correct?

Tom Young

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20448141#Comment_20448141

I've not seen a correct quote price ("quote price" x "factor") downloaded as at this point I have no TIPs or GNMAs. Way, way back when I did have some TIPs and GNMAs, probably at Schwab and/or Etrade, the quote downloaded never resulted in the correct value of the security.

Some users have reported receiving "proper" quotes from some FIs - maybe Fidelity? - and others only receive the pre-factor quote.

mshiggins

I had never seen this option until you initiated this discussion.

I too think, if it works, it could do as you would like (and as other users have wanted). 

I imagined two ways Quicken might handle it: not record (save) prices for the designated security that were downloaded from the financial institution, or save the downloaded prices from the financial institution, but ignore them when pricing securities in Quicken reports, etc.

I did a quick test and neither of my imagined options were true. Prices downloaded from the financial institution were saved in the Quicken Price History, and they were used to price the security in reports, So either it doesn't work or there's some key I haven't thought of.

I think Quicken should update Quicken Help to describe the purpose of the option (with an idea of how the result will be achieved). To avoid users having to wait for the Help update, it would help to give users a preview in this Community.

-JP

Chris_QPW

JP It seems to work for me (BTW I don't really see how they could do this at the report, since from what I can tell they have nothing to tell what the source is of the price in the price history).

Setup:

Delete price for last Friday from one of my securities (VTI).

Turn off downloading prices from quote server:

Edit Security to select this new option:

Do a One Setup Update so that the financial institution prices are downloaded:

Check to see if the price has been updated (it hasn't, financial institution price not used):

Edit security to remove that option:

Do another One Step Update and then check the price history.

Notice that the only fields set are the date and the price, this "signature" of being updated by the financial institution downloaded information opposed to the quote server which will fill in all the fields.

Reselect the option to download quotes for VTI and do the One Step Update:

mshiggins

"It seems to work for me .....

I thought I took the same steps when I tested as you did; and I thought I found downloaded broker prices after the new option had been selected. But I can't reproduce that now - and that's good. I agree it appears to work.

Thanks for catching this.

"BTW I don't really see how they could do this at the report, since from what I can tell they have nothing to tell what the source is of the price in the price history."

I assumed Quicken had to know the price source in order to know when a price is allowed to override another price in the Quicken price history. That is, in order to maintain the following hierarchy of security prices (where a price higher in the list overrides a price lower in the list):

Manual price entry

Current Price (Quote)

Historical Price (Quote)

Price downloaded with broker data through One Step Update or Update Now

Import Price (CSV)

Transaction Price entered when manually entering a transaction in the brokerage account list.

I have, on occasion wished the price hierarchy indicator was visible to the user when viewing the Quicken price history.

-JP

Chris_QPW

JP, good point on how do they know how to maintain the priority. Hadn't really thought about it before like that…

Actually, I think I might know, and it relates to a bug they had.

I remember once that they "optimized" the downloading of quotes to speed it up, and all of sudden that priority order was being violated.

Basically, they have mistakenly downloaded the price from the quote server first and then they got the price from the financial institution download. And as such the price from the financial institution was "winning".

So, I don't think they store the "source", they are just careful that the last price change comes from the "highest priority source".

q_lurker

So, I don't think they store the "source", they are just careful that the last price change comes from the "highest priority source".

But even with that, the price for sec-a on past date might have been csv input, and for sec-b a user input. So if historical prices then come in, one gets redone, the other doesn’t. Seems to me they’d have to store the source of every price for every security. I’d hope just a 1 to 6 value.

Chris_QPW

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20448755#Comment_20448755

There is that. I don't know, but I agree with JP if they have that information, it would really be nice if they displayed it in some way, like another column in the price list.