Corporate acquisition (stock for stock) results in incorrect avg annual returns in performance tab

MagillCPA

I noticed that the recent acquisition of Discover Financial Services by Capital One results in overstated (in my case) average annual returns under the performance tab in investing because of the way that Quicken handles recording the acquisition. Quicken has you remove the Discover shares at the cost basis and then adds the Capital One shares received at the old Discover basis, but as of the date of the acquisition. The Capital One shares are then valued based on the current market price. This has the effect of moving the unrealized gains from Discover held for many years as though the entire unrealized gain occurred on the date of the Capital One acquisition. This results in all periods having average annual returns greatly overstated in my case.

Quicken Kristina

Hello @MagillCPA,

Thank you for sharing your experience. To clarify, when you filled out the Corporate Acquisition information, everything transferred over correctly, but the new transaction date causes Quicken to see all the unrealized gains hitting as of the acquisition date?

You may be able to correct the issue by making a backup of your file, then following this suggestion from an earlier discussion:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20434778#Comment_20434778

I hope this helps!