I have Apple stock via my Schwab account. Friday - 6/6/14 was the 7-1 split day, but don't think it gets reflected until Monday 6/9/14
I looked "directly" at my Schwab holdings via the web, and as of today, Saturday, it does reflect the new holdings - both in price & new total quantity, but the "history" looked weird...
However, Quicken download did not receive any Split Trans, so guessing that will come down after Monday 6/9/14.
Union Pacific Railroad also split 2 for 1 on Friday. The d/l from Vanguard just caused an 'add' to Q of xx.xxx shares rather than a formal "Stock Split" transaction in Q.
From a Q point of view (reports, basis, etc.) does it make any sense to delete the 'add' transaction to replace it with a 2/1 stock split Q transaction, or is the plumbing underneath just the same anyway. (The comment that Vanguard had in the transaction ind. it was for a stock split for documentation purposes.)
For me personally - and YMMV - I tend to want to retain all the historical info and relative cost basis numbers, so I want the real split entered, so the orig cost numbers, and everything else gets re-adjusted vs just having some XXX number of shares magically appear. Therefore - if my Schwab download doesn't reflect that - which I don't think it will - prob will just Add XXX Shares - I delete it - and create the real Split transaction manually.
I had the same issues with the Google split... I wanted to retain all the historical purchase info, so I manually created the entries for both of the entities... But - that's just me -
BTW - my Schwab - Apple w/split shares will probably do the same thing your UP stock did. My Schwab account shows.... ie - let's say holding 100 shrs with 7-1 split. the transaction will be (100shrs x 7) - 100shrs existing = Add 600 new shrs
I will therefore, delete the "Add 600 shrs" and replace it with the Stock Split 7-1 transaction yielding the 700 total shares..retaining all the history.
Yes, thanks. Understood about the 'magical' shares appearing. That's why I did mention it is in the comments section so if I happen to be looking at the register, I can see that.
But my real question is when running reports and such is there anything different. But I think you might be right in that the COST BASIS of the pre-existing shares might not be reflected accurately AFTER the split if one is just ADDING a bunch of shares. I can certainly test that out manually and will do so. I think that indeed doing a 2/1 split will correctly reduce the cost basis of those existing shares, whereas just doubling them (or in your case, 7x them!) may not do anything for those.
OTOH, since these are INSIDE my IRA, I am not sure I really care about the cost basis anyway, right? :-)
Cost basis might be important if it's a Roth IRA...
I prefer to keep the xctns pure & do the splits, even if cost basis isn't i mportant for tax reporting purposes. The "add shares", combined with price changes "could" result in some erroneous ROI %. It would probably be a pr etty narrow set of circumstances that would create the issue, but...
In my observation, software design is intended to model the reality of what happens. In reality, it's a split, so that's what the software design acc ommodates. If you use the software in a manner that isn't intended, you ma y get lucky & never notice. Then again, you may not.
Hi, Andrew.
Even so, isn't is just as easy to do it right as it is to do it wrong? Even easier, actually.
RC
-- -- R. C. White, CPA San Marcos, TX (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.) snipped-for-privacy@grandecom.net Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010) (Using Quicken Deluxe 2014 R 7 and Windows Live Mail in Win8.1 x64)
ps56k wrote:
Yes, thanks. Understood about the 'magical' shares appearing. That's why I did mention it is in the comments section so if I happen to be looking at the register, I can see that.
But my real question is when running reports and such is there anything different. But I think you might be right in that the COST BASIS of the pre-existing shares might not be reflected accurately AFTER the split if one is just ADDING a bunch of shares. I can certainly test that out manually and will do so. I think that indeed doing a 2/1 split will correctly reduce the cost basis of those existing shares, whereas just doubling them (or in your case, 7x them!) may not do anything for those.
OTOH, since these are INSIDE my IRA, I am not sure I really care about the cost basis anyway, right? :-)
No R.C - actually is easier to do it 'wrong'!
Because as I originally said, the d/l from the f/i just does a "share add" with the correct # and date, and that's it. Other than accepting the transaction, nothing else for me to do, and after that, the total # of shares in the account is correct!
To do it "right", requires a manually intervetion, at the least, entering the ratio in the dialog.
But I did make the change and all is well.
Similar error with Quicken and Fidelity brokerage. Downloading transactions from Fidelity to Quicken gave me a register transaction "ADD N SHARES" for Apple. This is absolutely wrong. I deleted this transaction and manually added a "split" register transaction to Quicken.
I would like to know if this is a situation where Fidelity is sending bad data, or if Quicken servers make it impossible to handle a stock split correctly.
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