Historical Prices Not Working

I've spent countless hours on the phone with Quicken (usually on hold, although I'm Premier) trying to get historical prices for my portfolio for 12/31/19. Finally an agent told me yesterday that the function doesn't work and there have been complaints for the past week. I asked when Quicken would fix this problem and have gotten no response. My understanding is that this is a Morningstar database that Quicken uses and it's not working.

I can update current prices in my portfolio -- it just does nothing if I choose 1 year or 2 years or 5 years of historical data. There are no problems with the symbols and these are publicly traded securities. The issue is with Quicken's database that Historical Prices is linked to.
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  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    I'll offer you what I know based largely on my experiences -- Three (or four) sources for prices going into your Quicken database.  
    1)  Your brokerage -- When you download transactions from your financial institution via a one-step update (Windows Direct Connect or Express Web Connect), or by an import of a QFX file (Web Connect), that information almost always includes prices for the most recent closing.  If you did that on 1/1 or 1/2, you would likely get the 12/31 values. 
    2)  Quicken / Current quotes -- When you ask Quicken to "Download Quotes", I've found it to include the prior 5 days of 'current' quotes.  Asking that of Quicken anytime through 1/7 should yield the closing values for 12/31.  Those values are provided to Quicken (last I heard) by an outfit called Markit on Demand. 
    3)  Quicken / Historical quotes -- WAAAAY back, historical prices came from a different vendor than current prices.  I don't know if that is still the case.  But the pattern on historical prices is unchanged.  You can ask for and get data as far back as 5 years, but the density of the data varies.  You get the daily prices for the past 30 days, the end-of-week prices, for the 11 months prior to that (for a year total), and the month-end prices for the prior 4 years bringing the total to 5 years.  That means that as of today (2/19/20) you'd get daily prices back to 1/20/20, 'Friday' prices from 1/17/20 back to 2/22/2019, and month end prices from 1/31/2019 back to 2/27/2015.
    4)  The 'fourth' source is your personal data entry 

    At this stage, none of those first three sources are going to provide 12/31/19 closing prices.  NONE.  You've gotten no response because 12/31/19 prices won't flow through the system until January 2021.  You could have gotten that data up until Jan 30 or 31 but you would have needed to ask for historical quotes.  Not any longer.    

    [Qualifier 1 -- I can't say for sure any longer that the normal download quotes request does or does not include historical prices.  Sometimes it seems to; other times, not.]

    [Qualifier 2 -- It may be that with some FIs, you could select a QFX download as of 12/31/19 and thereby get the prices imported into Quicken from them.  I would consider that the exception, rather than the rule.  You might want to investigate that further.]

    My bottom line suggestion to you -- Entering the prices manually would be more time effective than spending hours on the phone with Quicken support.  
  • awdibble
    awdibble Member ✭✭
    q_lurker. Thanks so much. I was on the phone with Quicken support when your response came in, and the agent agreed that I should manually enter the data. You certainly have a better grasp of the situation than the 6 different agents I've spoken with in the past few days...

    I was out of the country on 1/30 so I didn't do my usual reconciliation. Lesson learned to update stock quotes as soon after the end of month as possible.

    It is misleading that Quicken touts "Historical Prices" for 1, 2, and 5 years and really can't provide that information.

    Off to manually enter 12/31/19 prices :-( Probably will be more fulfilling that being on hold waiting for Quicken to pick up!
  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    just reading along - and was curious -
    As a test - I added XOM - which I did not have in my Security List -
    Then I looked at the  Price History - it was all there -
    ??

    QWin - R54.16 - Win10

  • awdibble
    awdibble Member ✭✭
    edited February 2020
    I just did the same, and it doesn't pull the closing price for 12/31/19...that's the date I'm trying to download. Sorry I can't get the picture to insert, but here's the jpg.
    EDIT - added the instream JPG

  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2020
    Weird - I tried a couple others... that I do not have holdings -
    and they were the same as your BAC display
    with the 1 week pricing gap vs the every day pricing from the Exxon - XOM -
    BUT - notice your pricing reverts back to daily prior to Dec 6 -

    QWin - R54.16 - Win10

  • q_lurker
    q_lurker SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭
    If awdibble had a 'full' record of prices 12/6/19 and did not do another price update until mid February, he would have the full prior info and daily info from mid January to mid February with only the end-of-week values filling in from 12/13/19 to 1/17/20.  

    XOM -- I would bet you had XOM in your database some time (5 years ago?) back.  Deleting the security from the security list does not delete the price history for that ticker from the price history records.  That is the only plausible explanation I know. 

    If you want to pursue some additional related research, delete the recent two weeks or so from a price history record and also create another gap a couple of months back.  See what information gets filled in and added in by both Download Quotes and Download Historical Prices requests.  I think my incomplete testing suggests that prices get filled in using the 30-day daily, then weekly, then monthly pattern but only back to the most recent existing date in the price history for that security.  
  • awdibble
    awdibble Member ✭✭
    Q_lurker is correct in his assumption. I usually keep my Quicken portfolio quotes up to date through Quicken downloaded data, but I’m just interested in the last trading day of each month that I reconcile with my brokerage statement. Since I didn’t know about Quicken’s gaps in quote downloads, I didn’t do a download from 12/27/19 until 2/17/20. I couldn’t get the closing prices for 12/31/19, but do have them for 1/31/20 (not shown on screenshot). Lesson learned!
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