Best strategies to address pricing discrepancy (John Hancock 401K)

plasman

Hello,

My name is Andy. I am using Quicken Premier Classic for Window. I have been a Q user for 30 years. Still learning.

Question about using stock split or dividend multiplier

Here is my situation. I have a 401K with John Hancock. Part of the portfolio is in Fidelity Contrafund (fcntx). Simple. However, JH has a "sub account" that they generate their own pricing on. It follows the market relatively well. The pricing is not available via a standard download, but I can check it daily (or more likely quarterly). Their pricing takes into account stock splits/dividends.

As of 12/31/24, JH said price was 443.48… -Market at 21.03 - a multiple of apprx 21.08 . A year earlier, the multiple was 21.043

Specifically, I know that the price is a relatively stable multiple of what i can download for price.

Therefore, I can either multiply the price download, or temporarily increase my number of shares.

For closer accuracy and ease, I want to "inflate" my share balance.

Two approaches are: use a dividend multiplier or use a stock split. I will reconcile likely every qtr moving forward.

What are pro's & con's of each approach?

Thanks in advance for your assistance!

NotACPA

What you own is NOT the retail version of Contrafund, but rather a JH specific variant of that fund that's provided to JH by Fidelity.

If you want accuracy in your valuation, your only option is to periodically go out to JH's website and manually record the quote that they show into your Q data file. You probably want to use a custom quote for this security, so as to not inadvertently downoad the quote for the retail security, which you're right is about $21. Just be sure that the custom symbol isn't used by any other security.

Don't inflate your share balance. Don't artifically split your shares. Record accuracy.

BTW, I'm a Fidelity customer also, and have previously had the same issue with other 401K's, both mine and wife's

NotACPA

What you own is NOT the retail version of Contrafund, but rather a JH specific variant of that fund that's provided to JH by Fidelity.

If you want accuracy in your valuation, your only option is to periodically go out to JH's website and manually record the quote that they show into your Q data file. You probably want to use a custom quote for this security, so as to not inadvertently downoad the quote for the retail security, which you're right is about $21. Just be sure that the custom symbol isn't used by any other security.

Don't inflate your share balance. Don't artifically split your shares. Record accuracy.

BTW, I'm a Fidelity customer also, and have previously had the same issue with other 401K's, both mine and wife's

plasman

thank you for your input!

NotACPA

@plasman I just did a bit more research re: Contrafund on Fidelity's website.

They show 2 other classes (variant's) of FCNTX, but all have a quote in the $20 range. So, even Fidelity doesn't have another symbol that you could use.

Jim_Harman

If you can download transactions for the 401(k), the correct price for the JH version of the fund should download along with the transactions. Be sure to un-check the Download Quotes box and change the ticker symbol for the fund to something unique so that you will not get competing quotes from Quicken's quote provider.