Stock split pricing

Alan Fields

I just received a 6-for-1 stock split. The broker downloaded two transactions, a "Remove Shares" for the original holding and a "Add Shares" for the new holding. All well and good. For my own bookkeeping, I deleted the Add and Remove and put up a new "Stock Split" transaction to record the 6-for-1 Split.

The Quicken portfolio view now shows the adjusted share counts. Adjustments for all tax lots occur on the correct split date (counts prior are the originals and counts on the date and after are 6 times larger just as they should be ).

Problem: Quicken records the share price as adjusted as of what looks like 30 days prior to the split so the value of the security (quantity x share price) drops to one sixth of reality on that date and jumps right back on the true split date. It just looks really odd to see the historic value chart take a huge dip for about a month and come back to normal on the day.

I figure I can go back, find the price history and edit the share prices for each incorrect day before the split (not a big deal, just a pain in the neck), but Quicken should have tracked the pre- and post- split pricing in sync with the share quantities. Is this a bug or just the nature of the pricing source?

Any other thoughts?

Jon

If the stock split is happening this weekend then I would wait until Monday before worrying about any problems with the pricing data. Any errors you're seeing now will probably be resolved by then.

MontanaKarl

I had a similar thing today… Schwab and quicken downloaded an Add Shares instead of a Split (consistent problem with Schwab and quicken) which of course did not change my basis lots but created a new huge lot with a basis of zero. Deleted Add Shares and added the 6 for 1 split and all looks good but can well imagine many people not noticing and having their basis lots be wrong. One of many things (maturing fixed income being another big one) where automatic downloads result in incorrect data in Schwab investment accounts.

clinc

Same historic price error here after I changed a downloaded Schwab transaction from Add Shares to Stock Split for a Schwab 6 for 1 split.

Alan Fields

@MontanaKarl and @clinc are both seeing the same Schwab split i received. Thinking about it, I’m betting that share quantities come from my own Quicken file and pricing comes from an outside vendor/source (which gets stored in my file). My plan is to wait for Monday’s updates (to be delivered Tuesday morning), then go back and adjust the share prices in my own file and watch over time to see if it holds up. So long as the current values are good, I will be fine.

AncientWalrus

I'm having the exact same issue. It is like the 30 days leading up to the stock split are priced with the new price, but the number of shares is the old number, so it creates an artificial dip in value:

Alan Fields

@AncientWalrus Absolutely correct. A perfect match for what I've been seeing.

I would think that the vendor providing Quicken with price quotes should correct this so that prices and quantities line up correctly.

If not, the question left is do we go back and edit the securities during the dip (6x the stored price) to show the real values or just leave it alone to eventually disappear in the mists of time. Thoughts?

jacobs

The quote provider might fix it, but there's a good chance they might not. I would go in and edit the price table. If you don't want to do the math and tweak each entry, you could just delete the dates which are wrong due to the split for those 4 weeks.

AncientWalrus

I'm betting this is a bug in Quicken itself, not a problem with the quote provider. I want ahead and manually adjusted the price from July 16 - Aug. 14 to fix it. Very tedious, couldn't find a way to do it other than one day at a time. At lease you can do a "*6" on the price instead of doing the math yourself… :/

Jon

@AncientWalrus The other way to do it would have been to set up a spreadsheet with the correct prices, export it to a CSV file, and import that into Quicken. There's an option to let the imported prices overwrite the existing prices so you don't even have to go through and manually clear out the incorrect pricing first. If you could download correct prices from a website that would be fairly easy to do. When you select the import option there's a pop-up that tells you exactly how to format the CSV.

NotACPA

The period where the dip in price shown is after the "ex-date" of the split and before the "record date".

After the ex-date, you're entitled to the split even if you sell during that period.

SO, you could also choose to record the split on the ex-date, which might be the easiest solution.

Alan Fields

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20507895#Comment_20507895

@AncientWalrus Yup, yup, yup! Man of my own mind. Whether it's Quicken or some outside source doesn't really matter. The correction and results are all the same. We're done and outta here.

Stephen Hansen

I had the same thing happen on SWTSX. After the split, the prices for pre-split dates were wrong. So I adjusted them manually, and got it cleaned up.

IT JUST HAPPENED AGAIN. The pre-split prices of SWTSX are wrong, again.

Not just for 30 days before the split, either. This goes back at least a year.

It seems that Quicken cannot do even very basic accounting. Keeping track of numbers that were entered months ago, seems pretty basic.