5 years of quotes in securities list (Mac Quicken 2007)

I have a list of about 15 or so stocks that I update current prices and 5 years of history for. However, when I pick individual stocks and pick a 5 year window by:

Activities -> Securities Detail (in the Mac version)

all but two stocks give me a full 5 year range except two: Apple (AAPL) and Intel (INTC). For these two I get only about a one week plot and selecting a longer window does not affect the plot display. Does anyone know why or see this behavior?

I even get a full 5 year plot for Sun Microsystems (JAVA) that changed its stock symbol a couple of years ago (from SUNW as I recall).

Odd. Thanks!

Reply to
John
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Not a lot of Mac responsders here, I suppose. I'm a Windows user, so what follows is all guessing.

If the "Securities Detail" is the Q for Mac equivalent of the Q for Windows "Security Detail View" where we can see all the info for a selected security, plus all its transactions, plus see a line graph of its price history (or market value): I'd say you are either missing some price history records or your price history is corrupted.

In Q for Windows, if I saw what you're seeing, I'd select one of securities in question (in that same Security Detail View), and click "Update" in the menu line above, then select "Edit Price History". There I would see every price history "record" Quicken had for that security. I'd look around the date where the prices seem to be missing.

If I determined that prices were missing, I'd guess the price history was corrupted (unless I had a reasonable suspicion that I had done something to prevent those prices from downloading, like unchecking them in list of securties to get prices, or used the wrong ticker symbol, etc.).

In Windows, it's pretty easy to verify price history corruption, and reasonably easy to get rid of it ... because the price history is stored in it own Windows file, with no other data but prices. My recollection is that the Mac doesn't have a separate price history file, so the cause of price problems would be harder to confirm and rectify. If the Mac guess is correct, the only thing I can think of is to Validate ... and hope.

[For a limited verification, you could create a New Quicken file, add the two troublesome securities, download historical prices and check the graph.]
Reply to
John Pollard

Ok. I emailed support at Quicken and they told me to delete the Quotes folder. (findable on a Mac in the Finder search window by typing "quotes". And the folder "Quotes Details" has a file named for each stock. With the backups, you have to figure out which folders are for your working file (not difficult). So I deleted the stuff, brought it back, same problem. AAPL and COMPX gave only about 5 latest day quotes. However, something somewhere gave way and INTC (Intel) got a full 5 years of quotes, when it wouldn't at first!

I finally got tired of reading my handful of printed Quicken books for Windows and not seeing exactly my Mac windows and commands, so I printed the 477 User Guide in the on line program. I discovered the "re-index" command for Macs (option-command-B) which wasn't even findable in a help search in the program! I tried it on my test file and my real file, it didn't change this problem. Apparently indexing and file corruption is not the source of the problem.

Somewhere along the line something gave way again and I now had 5 years of COMPX in my test file, but not my working file. So I exported it to qif and imported it to my working file. So far so good (not for the bugs in Quicken, but for my working file). Now how to get

5 years of quotes for AAPL. I went to Google Financial, looked up AAPL, changed its window to 5 years, and saw a download to csv button. I did that, then used my years of emacs macro experience to simply rearrange the thousand or so csv entries to qif import format. I imported it to my test file, and other than it pruning away many of the daily quotes, more so the older they were, (wouldn't it be nice if Quicken explained this algorithm?) and now had a graphable 5 year history, in Quicken, in my test file. (oh, the printed manual tells how to import stock quotes in qif... I guess they show you this because they know their program fails so often?) So now it was in my test file, so I imported it in to my working file. So now I have 5 years of history for all the stocks and indexes I'm watching, and know how to "beat" Quicken when it fails at this. Sigh.

Thanks to John Pollard:

John Pollard wrote:

This reminded me about creating a test file to "go crazy on" with wild and crazy tests, which helped.

The only explanation consistent with all my tests is that the Mac version has a serious bug in its historical quotes download code.

Which brings me to new questions. I have Mac Quicken 2007 that I bought about a year ago. There is an update menu item, but as far as I can recall in the past year there have been no updates discovered there at all. I know Intuit seems to care little for their Mac version, but is its development dead now? dying? Should I start looking for a new financial package on the Mac? Which should I look at?

Thanks (mainly to John Pollard :-) )

[and I'm going to add this message to my open case at Intuit, so I consider my complaints and questions filed with Intuit as well as here :-) ]
Reply to
John

In Q for Windows, we can import a (correctly formatted) .csv file of prices directly. We display the Portfolio tab (or button) on the screen, click File > Import > Import Prices (the import prices option only appears when the Portfolio is displayed).

Q for Windows used to get current prices from S&P Comstock, and historical prices from Inverson.

Intuit recently made big changes to the downloading of investment info (prices, asset classes, etc.) and the changes do not appear to be quite finished yet. I don't know whether those changes do, or will, have any effect on Mac users.

Both Intuit and Microsoft have been changing policies in an apparent attempt to reduct unprofitable practices. Intuit has dropped several foreign versions of Quicken, and MS has decided not to have a 2009 version of Money (and versions for future years are on a To Be Decided basis).

I have no idea what Intuit has in mind for Q for the Mac. I have ready many times from those who have tried both the Mac and Windows versions that the Mac version is not nearly as good as the Windows version. Though as mentioned above, the downloading of investment info appears to still be a work-in-progress.

With that in mind, why not look into one of those Windows emulators for the Mac that would allow you to run Quicken for Windows on your Mac?

Reply to
John Pollard

Excuse the typo: historical prices came (and probably still come) from "Iverson".

Reply to
John Pollard

Hey look, Quicken support confirms that AAPL won't get 5 years of quotes:

not downloading.

To review, INTC didn't either at first, but somewhere along the way of 1000 tests, it did. But not AAPL.

They didn't say whether they intended to report it to be fixed. Sigh.

Oh well, I know how to get them elsewhere and import them now.

Reply to
John

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