Is it possible to update investment account transactions without updating prices?

rmk28027

I want to be able to update the investment transaction for a specific account within my overall Charles Schwab account. I did not want to update the share prices or balances.

However, when I tried to update a specific account Quicken it updated all of my Schwab investment accounts and included updated pricing.

If I can't update transactions only, is it possible to update a single account without affecting the other Schwab accounts?

Thanks

Jim_Harman

This seems like an odd request. Can you explain your reasoning? Many investment transactions - Buy, Sell, Reinvest for example - will affect the share prices even if you do not download prices.

Normally, downloading transactions for one account will download the transactions for all connected accounts at that brokerage and update the prices for all the securities you hold there.

If for some reason you want to update a particular account manually, you can disable downloads just for that account and un-check the Download Quotes box in the Security List for all securities in that account. But if you hold the same securities in another account, their prices will no longer be updated when you download quotes and the prices in the disconnected account will be updated when you download transactions in the other account.

If you are having problems with incorrect prices being downloaded, we can deal with that problem in other ways.

rmk28027

The reason for the request is that one of my Schwab accounts has a number "collateralized mortgage obligations" (CMOs) issued by Fannie Mae, approx. 25. With CMOs the value of the asset is not a reflection of the listed price. Because the monthly repayment of the CMO is a combination of principal and interest the value of the principal needs to be recalculated each month. For example, while the CMO may have a face value of $1,000 (10 units at $100) the actual value may $500, because of the repayment of a portion of the principal. Therefore the pricing that needs to be entered in Quicken is $50 ($500/ 10 units).

While the monthly transaction ma only be a payment of principal and interest downloading the quote for the security throws off the actual value of the investment.

So each time I run an update I need recalculate the adjusted value of the CMO and to go in to Quicken and manually adjust the price history on each of the 25 CMOs. Therefore I try to only update the account with the CMOs once a month to save me the extra work.

Thanks for the suggestion to disable the download quotes.

Boatnmaniac

Interesting. So you are trying to track the underlying value of the CMO instead of trying to track the market value of the CMO?

If so, then are you also trying to capture the underlying values of Mutual Funds, ETFs and Stocks? And what about Bonds and brokered CDs? Shouldn't you also be trying to track the underlying values of these things instead of their market values?

Example: Pay $100 for 10 CDs for $1000 total invested with a coupon of 5% that matures in 12 months. If you hold the CD for 12 months, you will get back the full initial investment of $1000 plus $50 in interest. But between the issue date and the maturity date, the market value (what people will actually pay for it if you were to sell it) will usually be lower or higher than what you actually paid for it even though the underlying value is still $1000 (plus some amount of interest). Shouldn't the investment be tracked based upon what you could get for it on the open market?

I'm not criticizing. I know little about CMOs and am just trying to understand why one would want to track the underlying value of an investment when if they were to sell that investment they would be paid what the market price is, not the underlying value. What am I missing here?

rmk28027

My issue is not with tracking the underlying value of the CMO. I am willing to go through the monthly process of manually updating the price history of the CMO. I just don't want to unnecessarily go through the process in the middle of the month.

In your example you are using a CD which is treated differently than a CMO. A CMO is basically a bond. But instead of getting the face value of the bond returned at the end of the term the CMO receives a portion of the principal with each payment (interest plus principal). For a Fannie Mae CMO look at it as owning a piece of large pool of mortgages. When the mortgagor pays their monthly payment which includes interest and principal that payment is them split amongst the CMO owners.

If the CMO is sold at one day before the it's maturity date the value of the CMO is basically zero since all of the principal (except for the last month of mortgage payments) has already been repaid.

At least that is my understanding.

Boatnmaniac

…instead of getting the face value of the bond returned at the end of the term the CMO receives a portion of the principal with each payment (interest plus principal). For a Fannie Mae CMO look at it as owning a piece of large pool of mortgages. When the mortgagor pays their monthly payment which includes interest and principal that payment is them split amongst the CMO owners.

Thanks for the clarification. If I am understanding this correctly, it seems like the monthly payments are more of an Interest + Return of Capital transaction. Maybe you would want to explore using that Return of Capital transaction option in your investment account to see if that might meet your need? It seems like this transaction type is designed for use with CMOs and other mortgage-backed securities.

Jim_Harman

@rmk28027

Thanks for clarifying the issue.

You should be able to prevent all quote downloads for a security as follows:

Find the security at Tools > Security List and un-check the Download Quotes box. This will disable downloads from Quicken's quote provider.

To prevent quote downloads from the broker, click on the security name to open the Security Detail view, then click on Edit details and Other info to open the Additional Security Information page. There you will find the "Ignore prices from broker download" checkbox. Checking that box should stop price updates from the broker.

You will still have to adjust the prices manually and/or use the ROC as described above, but at least you should not get incorrect downloaded prices.

This is a relatively new feature; please let us know if it works for you. See this discussion for more information

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7954958/what-does-ignore-prices-from-broker-download-mean

rmk28027

@Boatnmaniac

Quicken does track the return of capital part of the transaction. The problem is that Schwab tracks the adjusted value of the security, i.e. the $50/unit see above but it also tracks the $100/unit for the price quote. (I don't know why it doesn't show the adjusted amount for the price quote.

When Quicken downloads the information for the security it downloads the $100 price quote and shows the sacurity value as $100* 10 units equaling $1,000 instead of $500.

volvogirl

If you don’t want to download or update the price I think you need to delete the fund ticker symbol on that security. Why does it have one?

Jim_Harman

@volvogirl

On older versions of Quicken, deleting the ticker would prevent price updates from the quote feed.

But since the "Real time quotes" option was introduced, if the ticker is blank, Download Quotes is checked, and you have chosen the Real time Quotes option, you will get bogus prices. The price you get is the price for the first ticker in your Security List alphabetically that has the Download Quotes box checked (often AAPL). That is why I advise users to un-check the Download Quotes box if they don't want quotes from the quote provider.

Even with Download Quotes un-checked, you will still get quotes from the FI if the security is set up for transaction downloading. In the case we are discussing here, the FI's price is wrong, so @rmk28027 should be able to stop those prices from downloading by checking the new "Ignore prices from broker download" box.