Allow adding Ticker Symbol to the Holdings view

JoeL.

When viewing the holdings for a particular investment account, the first left column is the full, long name of the stock/etf. It would be extemely easier to absorb what we're reading if the Ticker symbol was one of the columns. For example, if we are reconciling what we have in Quicken vs what our broker/bank is showing, the ticker symbol would be much easier to sort by and compare with.

Jim_Harman

While you are waiting for Quicken to decide whether to implement this idea, you can rename your securities in Quicken so that the name starts with the ticker symbol, like GE-General Electric.

This fixes the problem wherever security names are used and is particularly useful when you hold mutual funds with long but very similar names.

skeleton567

Jim, this may or may not be a good idea. Years ago I tried something akin to this where I began simply assigning a sequential number prefix to the security name. I can tell you that I am now slowly undoing this, and it is a PITA.

I agree that there is a need to be able to customize the sort order of the holdings screen in order to match to the brokerage statement. I have nine various active security accounts with Fidelity - two IRA's, three brokerage accounts, and several 529 plans, and most of them have holdings in common. And my investing history in Quicken is spread through twenty six brokerage accounts. Then there are two more cash management accounts. The number of individual holdings for some of these accounts has grown to three or more pages. This is exacerbated by the fact that many, many of the mutual fund holdings begin with the same common designation of 'Strategic Advisors…' which even makes search results include far too many possible selections and the whole name is not visible. When I begin typing the security name, I am presented with far too many in the list which causes me to do lots of scrolling, and often make mistakes because I cannot view the entire name.

I haven't analyzed this thoroughly, but in order for this to work satisfactorily, it needs to be very carefully designed. I don't believe at this point my holdings are even sequenced by ticker symbol by the broker, and of course there is the issue that Q has allowed me to hold securities without symbols and then discover the price history issues that this created for my data when I attempt to fix the symbols.

First thought is that for this to be effective, it may need to be relative to each account rather than an overall security sequence. Not sure about that yet. But this could create another situation like the sharing of price history across accounts, which I know has been a 'bone of contention' with some of us on here. Every month I update accounts with common holdings. I even had two accounts with the same security but the month-end 'closing price' differed between the accounts so I had to settle for one account being 'out of balance'.

And next is the issue that different brokerages will sequence their statements in different ways, so the even the common ticker symbol may not work for all of them. My common brokerage accounts are at least categorized by Stock Funds, Bond Funds, Short-term Funds, Exchange Traded Products and they may have other categories for which I have no holdings

Now most of you have argued 'What difference does the price history sharing make? It is all up to the brokerage anyway.' Well, in our case, sometimes it causes an account balance in our records to change by hundreds of dollars as other accounts are reconciled.

One thing I learned in 42 years of designing systems and working with data is never to put two pieces of data in the same data element (piece of stored data). That is exactly what I did years ago with the number in the security name, and now regret. Fixing security designations is what buggered up my price history, which in turn altered my returns and investment performance as I posted in another discussion.

I don't know how much you may be involved in data design, but the main means of ordering data storage is what we call 'indexing' which allows the viewing of a single collection of data (called a table) in different orders at a very low, very efficient level by using combinations of data elements called 'keys'. A key may consist of multiple data elements combined in various numbers and sequences. Thus the single storage of securities could be 'indexed' by name, by symbol, by brokerage, by exchange, and all kept in one place. This is akin to having multiple sequences. Then once the data is selected via the indexes, it can further be sorted on-the-fly in memory before being presented. Then we complicated this by having intermediate tables between two other tables to allow even more options for relationships and sequencing. And today most good software is even able to determine by itself the best, most efficient indexes to use for any given retrieval.

Then the next best feature of separate data elements in the display is that we can usually click on the column heading and change the sort order.

Probably today the best and most common 'language' for accessing databases is called SQL (Structured Query Language), but I think even this comes in various 'dialects'. I spent years designing data storage and retrieval in what are called relational databases

OK, have I bored you sufficiently with this?

P-Dub

This may provide the view desired, plus it provides a view inclusive of all investments accounts without the need to go to the "Holdings" view for each account individually;

1. Chose the Investing Tab Portfolio view
2. Set the "Group by:" field to "Accounts"
3. Select "Customize"
4. In the "Customize Current View" dialog box set "Show symbols in name column" then select "Ok" to return to the Portfolio view
5. Click the "Name" column to toggle ascending or descending sorting by symbol within the accounts

The order in which the accounts are arranged can be set under the "Accounts" tab of the "Customize Current View" dialog box using "Move Up" and "Move Down".

Alternatively one could add the "Ticker Symbol" column to the "Displayed Columns" and sort on it with or without setting "Show symbols in name column". Having the security name remain in the "Name" column may be of value.

JoeL.

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20472138#Comment_20472138

Thanks for this suggestion. I hadn't thought of that. This provides a nice workaround for some scenarios and also solves a different reporting need I've been looking for by showing me my investment % across a set of accounts for each security (e.g. when the same security is in multiple accounts). The one thing this report workaround doesn't let me do is view my holdings and click on the shares held and update the shares held (based on my broker reports), so it would still be a good feature to add the Ticker to the holdings view if Quicken staff are reading this. Although editing the security name to include the Ticker at the beginning, I'd rather not do that.