Is the Quicken Clouds running slow today

The launch speed of the Quicken Mac shouldn't be affected by any cloud activity. One thing to check any time Quicken feels sluggish is to see if you have open report windows which are hidden behind the main window. Pull down the Widow menu, and any open reports or transaction windows will be at the bottom; sleet them to call them to the front and close them. I've found it's easy to leave multiple screens open, and the main screen obscures them on startup, so it's hard to know you have open windows unless you look for them. But some reports which need to recalculate after every transaction you enter/edit can make Quicken run slowly.