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Unexpected mutual fund performance numbers after transfer to another account

John McCoy

I closed out an investment account by moving 5 equity mutual funds in kind to another account using Shares Transferred Between Accounts. The next day approximately half the shares in these funds were sold and reinvested. Afterwards, the ROI (year to date) and AvgAnnualReturn (%) 1-Year of these funds were out of whack as shown below. These numbers are for one fund for illustration purposes. The other funds are similar.

In the prior account before transfer: ROI=3.9 AAR%=25.67 Share price=99.73

In the other account after transfer: ROI=9.86 AAR%=0.0 Share price=97.38

After selling half the shares: ROI=7.27 AAR%= -99.99

I would think the Before and After transfer numbers should be the same but after the partial sale the AAR% goes totally off the chart. I would like to understand what may have caused this and how to correct it.

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Comments

Jim_Harman

When you transfer shares between accounts and you are looking at the AAR for a date range that includes the transfer date, you must include both the old and the new accounts.

Also Quicken's ROI (%) calculation is based on the Amount Invested, which does not decrease when there is a partial sale. Are you looking at the ROI for the individual security, or at account level ROI? I think Quicken's account level ROI calculation is flawed. See this lengthy discussion

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7864889/account-level-amount-invested-and-roi-are-calculated-incorrectly-when-a-security-is-sold

q_lurker

I find it easiest to diagnose or understand AAR% values using the Investment Performance Report. That tool allows you to see the details underlying transactions and you can more clearly customize to include/exclude accounts and securities.

With the report and both accounts included, on the transfer date you should see the total amounts of Returns and Investments associated with the transfer balance. Thus the removes from the old account balance against the add in the new account and there is no impact on the AAR% values.

Looking at the two accounts separately, those removes and adds can produce unexpected results.

John McCoy

Following up on the initial issue after a couple weeks, the 1-year AAR% has jumped significantly in each fund that had the initial problem. This is what I see after Friday close in the Portfolio view.

For one particular fund:

In previous account 4/17/2026 AAR% = 25.75 Looks reasonable

In new account 4/24/2026 AAR% = -96.38

5/1/2026 AAR% = -70.69

5/8/2026 AAR% = -36.61

I will never understand nor trust Q's performance numbers.

Jim_Harman

@John McCoy Quicken's AAR (%) calculations are trustworthy, but you must understand how they work.

The AAR (%) numbers are annualized. If you purchased a security recently, they assume the recent performance will continue at the same rate for a full year. If you have held the security for one month and it is up 5%, the AAR will be about 5 x 12 or 60%. The same applies to transferred securities if you are just looking at the receiving account.

If you held the securities in the old account for over a year and transferred the shares recently, you must subtotal by security and include both accounts in the analysis. to see a useful performance figure.

John McCoy

My point was that the obviously bogus AAR% 1-yr as shown on the Portfolio window changed significantly in just 3 weeks, from -96.38 to -36.61. Certainly the market didnt cause this.
Switching the discussion to a different account that I opened about 2 months ago, the AAR% numbers are ridiculously high and show the exact same numbers for 1-yr, 3-yr and 5-yr. This being a new account, it does not yet have any long term returns to report. To make any sense these should all show N/A until the investments are held for 1, 3, or 5 years.
The previous response mentioned these are projections. This seems to only cause the total portfolio return, as shown at the bottom of the window, to be skewed from what it really is.
I am sure there are many novice investors like me in the Q community. The Portfolio page should be straight-forward and show investments exactly like they are on the day of viewing. It should not require novices like me to try to think up workarounds as mentioned in the previous note.
To repeat, I will never understand nor trust Q's performance numbers.

Jim_Harman

Let me try one more time.

AAR stands for Average Annual Return. This uses an "Internal Rate of Return" (IRR) calculation. It works well for periods of more then one year, but if you are subtotaling (grouping) by account and the account has only held the security for a short time, it does not have a full year of data to work with. In that case the IRR calculation assumes that whatever gains or losses have occurred will continue at the same rate for a full year, as I explained above. The results are not bogus, but they are potentially confusing. Excel's XIRR function does the same.

Perhaps Quicken should eliminate its Avg Annual Return (%) YTD column and show N/A in the Avg. Annual Return columns for any securities that have been held for less than the selected period, because the results might be confusing.

If you want to see the straight (not annualized) performance over a shorter period, you should use the ROI (%) column instead. Note that this will show confusing results if there have been partial sales of the security during the period.