How do I fix crazy balances in my Fidelity investment account?

Question

None of this (from Jan through mid-April) is real.  Sure, there have been small movements, but I never had as much as is reflected on that.  Oddly, it has no relation to the sums in my portfolio view, which are accurate.  Just the graphical representation is so far out of whack. Is anyone else experiencing phantom balances like that?  Any idea how to fix it?

Bennett S · Answer

OK, I figured it out, leaving some notes here in case it's a problem others experience.

What I found is that for some reason when bonds were called the transaction went in @ $1 per unit, not the traditional $100.  So, if I had a $10k bond called, it was originally in my portfolio at 100 units, but the redemption went through as 10000 units.  Since my ending balance was 0, it created a phantom 9900 units which then disappeared after the transaction.  The odd thing is the date the phantom shares were added to my account — not when I actually bought the bond, not on the date of the sale, but another date that I didn't even bother figuring out why.  The point is, that's where the bump in my portfolio value graph appeared — because for that period, the phantom shares were valued at $100 as per normal.  Strange, right?

The solution was to go into the redemption transactions and change the number of shares back to the $100 per number (ie in the example above, 100, not 10000).  Once I did that, the phantom shares went away.  Do that for all my bond redemptions and it's all good again, the graph looks as it should.  NOTE: deleting the add shares transaction on those phantom shares was NOT the solution.

Maybe this will be helpful to someone else.  I know I didn't manually enter any of the transactions, so the error must have been in the Fidelity download, and presumably affecting others in a similar fashion.

Bennett S · Answer

The difference between what's shown on the left and reality is more than $7 million. Maybe.a rounding error for some, but not for me, I can assure you.   I've never looked on a day and seen those kinds of balances, but now when I go in and say as of 1/1, I do get that big number.  Drilling in, I see where.

it's all those extra bonds in the lines saying 'add cost basis.'  Appprox 70k phantom shares at ~100/sh =7mm.  That explains why it's only my Fidelity account not at other brokers, because all my bonds are in Fidelity.  I thought it was something to do with them, but maybe it's a generic problem with bond tracking?  Anyway, the strange thing is that I did nothing and the current balances in the portfolio are accurate,  but obviously when I look at long-term graphs they're worthless to me.  Any thoughts as to how I might make them go away?

jacobs · Answer

It looks like you've posted a screenshot of the Portfolio view graph, correct? You cut out the Y-axis legend on the left side, so it's impossible to know how large or small a change it's depicted from January 1 through April 30.

So let's clarify what you're seeing. Are you saying that if you hover over the Jan 1 2024 vertical line and the May 1 vertical line, the number value it shows for one of those dates is incorrect? Using the As Of date above the chart, does the Market Value Total in the table below the chart are with the value shown on the chart of each of those days?

Here's a screenshot of a dummy account:

I've set the As Of date to be August 1, and the Market Value Total at the bottom matches the pop-up value when I hover my cursor over the August 1 line in the graph.

In your case, you'd do this on Jan 1 and May 1. On each of those dates, does the pop-up value on the chart match the Market Value Totals below? There should not be any difference. You've said above that the value in the Portfolio is accurate on each date, just the graphing is wrong. I can't figure out how the text table value and chart value could be different, so that's why I'm trying to make sure we're looking at the same things.