Placeholder entries created for fidelity brokerage downloads

I see these placeholders the day after I sell a stock: Day 1) buy 10 shares. Day 2) sell 10 shares, Day 3) down load transactions. The two transactions are complete and accurate. Placeholder is created on the download: "add shares" transaction adding the 10 shares back. Result: 1 buy, 1 sell, 1 placeholder, balance is 10 shares. It's as if Quicken is getting the "sell" transaction without getting an accurate share count from the institution. The placeholder only occurs after a sell and always to restore the balance to the number of shares held before the sell. I tried a second update today and the placeholder remain. Perhaps it's a timing issue. Rather than deleting the placeholders today, I will wait until after tomorrow's update to see if they remain.

After this morning's update - Placeholders seen yesterday still remain. New placeholders for securities sold yesterday, closing positions, have been added. Interestingly, sales of ETFs, also closing positions, are fine - no placeholders and share balances are correct. Positions that were trimmed, sold without closing the positions, did not trigger the placeholders. My guess is that Fidelity is reporting balances on securities held. With positions that are closed, they report nothing because nothing is held. Quicken responds with placeholders that balance the share counts back to the last count that was reported. I'll wait a few more days and updates to see if the placeholders are removed automatically.

I am as puzzled by these placeholder transactions as you might be. I have seen them associated with both buys and sells. It would be nice if we could find some documentation from Quicken on when and why they are created.

Any transaction reported by a brokerage firm may have a transaction date and a settlement date. These dates may be several days apart. My guess is that the placeholders are created to balance the number of shares reported as transacted vs. the number reported as settled with the objective of showing, in quicken, a number that matches the settled amount reported by the brokerage.

I have handled these placeholders as you have. If I delete them the account balances and the share counts match what I see in the brokerage online account. A few years ago I converted a 401k to an IRA. Quicken created placeholders for almost every security transferred to the new account. The result was that none of the investment reports in Quicken were accurate. It took a real effort to clean it up.

I have a few new transactions in Quicken now. Placeholders were added by Quicken after the download. I will do nothing and watch to see if Quicken fixes it in a few days.

I also went to Perplexity and entered the following query. Got an extensive response that touched on this issue. You may do the same and read up on what the AI tool thinks is going on. Authoritative? Well, it is AI…

"Explain when and why Quicken software adds placeholder transactions to brokerage accounts. These transactions typically zero-out a buy or sell so the share count matches the share count seen before the transaction was downloaded from a brokerage."