When does Quicken for Mac download latest share prices?

qudtp
qudtp Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭
edited November 22 in Investing (Mac)

There's a page of online Help for QMac about updating of share prices, but I don't know how to use the information it presents.

https://info.quicken.com/mac/updating-share-prices

I do see in QMac the Preference to automatically download share prices every 60 minutes, and I have that disabled.

But I can't tell if QMac also always downloads quotes every time you do an Update, or if this can be disabled entirely, nor if this happens every time you update any account, or only if you do a general update of all accounts.

I reported an issue in the Windows forums, where QMac (using Quicken Connect) got up-to-date share prices for Fidelity funds and stocks, while QWin (over EWC+) did not. On QWin, I had not selected the OSU Online services option to Download quotes. Once I enabled the download option, QWin's prices were updated. The implication is that QMac was downloading online quotes, while QWin was not. But I don't know when that happens on QMac or how it can be controlled.

The Help page describes a method of manually trigger the download of quotes, and it seems to be referring to some other version of Quicken. It refers to an Update Quote button "in any Portfolio View above the transaction list" (which seems to be a contradiction as the portfolio and transactions are on separate tabs). It also says to click the Investing tab, but I don't know what that is referring to. There is a lone checkbox in Window > Securities to "Download quotes only for Watchlist, indexes and securities held" and I don't know what that even means - it's ambiguous. If unchecked, does it mean it will download even MORE quotes than those (like for securities no longer held, and possibly for other things I don't know about)? And that implies that you really have no choice whether or not to download some set of quotes.

Besides toggling the automatic download every 60 minutes, how do you control downloading of quotes on QMac?

Comments

  • jacobs
    jacobs Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta

    Yes, Quicken Mac downloads quotes when you download transactions. There is no way to toggle that off that I'm aware of; e.g. you can't download transactions but not download prices.

    Quicken Mac Subscription • Quicken user since 1993
  • qudtp
    qudtp Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    You mean it downloads from Quicken's own source(s)?

    Does it download all security prices each time you go online whether updating a single account or all accounts?

    If it is downloading one account, does it download just the quotes for securities in that one account, or does it get all possible quotes?

    (I think sometimes the update of a single account actually does work - possibly even for Quicken Connect now, not just DC, but I'm not 100% sure of that. I do think I can download Citi Cards via DC all by itself. That's the only institution I have DC with still.)

    Does institution also send quotes over EWC+? If so, which takes priority, Quicken's quotes or the institution's? (Certainly if Quicken does hourly quotes, they are going to "win" in that scenario, but whether that option i enabled or not, there is still going to be a moment when one does an update.)

    On QWin, I have never enabled the download of quotes on the OSU screen until trying to today, so the quotes had to have been coming from solely Fidelity - at least they were when I was doing Direct Connect, but I'm unsure if they are downloaded via EWC+).

    And then the question of where one can trigger an immediate download of quotes - the button and options referred to in the Help pages don't seem to exist. Maybe all that remains in the current version is automatic every 60 minutes, or when you run an update?

    Thanks for your answer, and I hope you or others can fill in more details!

  • Jon
    Jon Quicken Mac Subscription SuperUser, Mac Beta Beta
    edited October 20

    Why are you asking these questions? What is it that you're trying to accomplish?

    As far as the "Download quotes only for Watchlist, indexes and securities held" checkbox is concerned, if you uncheck that I believe it will download prices for everything shown in the Securities window.

    The Watchlist is a feature that is only available if you have a Premier or higher subscription level. If you only have a Deluxe subscription, then AFAIK the only way to manually command a price download is through the Securities window - the other option is unavailable.

  • qudtp
    qudtp Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    (I can't even see how to command a download in the Securities window, unless I ask it to rebuild history for a security.)

    The impetus with this is that for Fidelity today, on QWin I didn't get updated prices, but on QMac I did.

    On QWin, I have always had the download of quotes turned off, but the prices have always gotten updated, presumably from downloads from Fidelity.

    So I was trying to find out, since it had current prices, was QMac downloading quotes from an external source. If not, it suggests EWC+ on QWin was broken, or delayed for some reason vs. QMac.

    I tried to explore quote downloads on QMac and couldn't get good answers from the online Help.

  • qudtp
    qudtp Quicken Mac Subscription Member ✭✭

    I think I can answer one of my questions. Looking at the modify timestamps in ~/Library/Application Supports/Quicken/Logs, the log file SecurityQuotesLog.txt is updated only when updating all accounts. If you update just one account, it is not updated.

    The HTTPLog.txt shows entries for each time I connect to Fidelity (and all other Quicken Connect institutions as well), and the data that is being downloaded including entries for each of my securities at Fidelity - and the prices it shows are stale. Though the latest messages in the log are dated right now (10/21), and each security entry states "modifiedAt" right now on 10/21, each security's "currentUnitPriceDate" is 10/17, and when I look up historical prices, the "currentUnitPrice" in the log is indeed Fridays' closing price. Terrible!

    Maybe Fidelity's EWC+ is always one day behind, or maybe it fell behind on 10/20 due to a problem, like the outage at AWS. Could have affected Fidelity, Intuit, or Quicken servers. While I haven't found the comparable log in QWin, I can postulate it's got the same stale data, and that's why my QWin holdings values were wrong until I enabled quote downloading.

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