QMac: How do I track a private investment fund?
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Rob
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A family friend manages a limited partnership investment fund. I invested (for simplicity sake) $100 in 2014, and it grew to $120 by 2015, when I invested $100 more. That $220 stake has since grown to $240. I get monthly statements showing the % (not the dollar amount) up and down of the entire fund, net of fees, and quarterly reports which show my current balance. I am not privy to the list of holdings that the fund buys and sells. I trust my friend as much as anybody in the financial industry, but find the whole industry awash in clever percentages and reports that mask what I really want to know which is... how much have I made or lost, and how does that compare to a S&P 500 ETF. Anybody have any tips?
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I would just Google "S&P return calculator" and you will get results like these:
https://dqydj.com/sp-500-return-calculator/
https://ycharts.com/indices/%5ESPXTR/ytd_return
Where you can see S&P 500 historical and recent gains.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?0
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From a Quicken perspective, you could put in a add shares transaction to put $1 or $100 worth of an S&P 500 ETF in a new or existing account. Then when you update price quotes, the value of this "investment" would change with the market. Then you could view and analyze it alongside your LP investment in the Portfolio view. Here some examples of ETFs to use:Rob said:Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?
http://www.investopedia.com/investing/top-sp-500-etfs/
One catch is that you wouldn't be able to include the positive affect of reinvested dividends with this method. And you might want to put in and keep updated an offsetting payment transaction so the overall value of the account is not affected.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s1 -
Thanks again, RickO. I appreciate your insights and suggestions.Rob said:Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?
I think I've overemphasized the S&P part of my question, as my primary concern was tracking my investment, and my secondary concern is comparing that to the S&P.
Do you have suggestions for how to track an investment in a limited partnership fund as described?
I initially made an account and arbitrarily considered each dollar to be 1 share. Then I recalculated that arbitrary share value when adding more money. But that method distorts the share price. If the fund has gone up 20%, the share price should go up 20%, but if I'm arbitrarily calculating share value every time I buy in, the math doesn't seem to line up.
Any users out there who have a similar situation? How did you solve it? Am I doing something wrong?0 -
If you simply want to keep track of the value in Quicken, I'd just make it a dollar per share fund like you would for a money market and then add shares as value increases.Rob said:Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?
But if you're trying to keep track of capital gains, reinvestments and tax implications, this isn't going to do it. And without more detail provided by the LP, I'm not sure how you could.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s0 -
At any given point I know how much I've put in, and every quarter I am updated on what my cash-out dollar value would be. Every month I'm updated on the entire fund's % up or down, and it's all above board with external auditors. So I have the basics.Rob said:Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?
Reinvestments, dividends etc. are hidden from partners. If I want to cash out, I can calculated capital gains by looking at the [(cash out value) - (how much I've put in)]. My goal is to figure out which numbers need to get plugged in where to have an ongoing sense of my balance with the reported percentages, that can then get confirmed or adjusted when my quarterly dollar report happens.0 -
If this were a "normal" fund, then some of the gain in value would be due to reinvested dividends and some would be to share price appreciation. Tax treatment of those two types of increases is different, of course (ordinary income vs capital gains).Rob said:Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?
I have no idea if LP such as this is treated differently for tax purposes. I would think the LP would have to conform to certain reporting requirements. But from a tax standpoint, this is something you would really need to consult a tax attorney or other tax professional about.
But from the standpoint of just keeping track of how well the fund is doing, you can just make it a $1 per share fund. When you make purchases, you show them in Quicken as BUY transactions (at $1 per share). When you find out that the fund value has increased from, say, $220 to $240 at the end of a quarter, then you show that in Quicken as a REINV DIV transaction of $20 at $1 per share. Doing this should allow Quicken to track the value and calculate ROI, etc.Quicken Mac Subscription; Quicken Mac user since the early 90s1 -
Exactly the kind of suggestion I was looking for, thank you. I've not explored how reinvested dividends work but this looks like a promising angle to pursue. Thank you very much.Rob said:Hi RickO, thanks for your suggestion. Anybody else have thoughts on the Quicken end of things?
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