Add Shares acquires price history?

Testing IRR reporting, so setup test account and experimented but keep getting as very curious result. Everytime I add a new test security (making sure that I've never used the security name before and that it is not in the Security List), it appears to "acquire" some Price History. I've tried this with six different security names and when I look into Security Detail, Price History, there are 2-4 prices for each security. They are on different dates for different amounts?

Anyone help on this?

thnx

David Kirk

What do you need help with? I don't see a problem described.

I am adding new securities, there shouldn't be a price history?

Every security that wasn't issued today has a price history: see Yahoo, etc..

Quicken includes some price history when it sets up a security that is new to your specific Quicken data; it has for some time ... actually, as long as I can remember (though I confess, my memory is not what it used to be). I still don't see a problem? You are the first person I can ever recall asking for "help" with this. You can easily delete the prices if you don't want them.

I am trying to do this to test IRR calculations for accounts that include corporate mergers.. So I am experimenting with a test accout and using ficticious security names like test1, test2, testnever, etc.. so that there couldn't be any price history. I have observed that IRR calculations are different for mergers depending on whether or not there is a price entered on the ADD SHARES transaction.

Quicken does not - can not - download any prices for a non-existant security - one that has no ticker symbol.

If you supply Quicken with a false security name, but a real ticker symbol; Quicken doesn't care. Never has. Quicken doesn't care what the name of the security is - in fact, you can have multiple security names with the same ticker symbol ... they will all get the same "prices". So: if you add a new security in Quicken with a totally phony name, but with a real ticker symbol ... you will get prices for the real-world security that has that ticker symbol.

While I'm not really clear what you can hope to accomplish, I suggest you start by accepting the way Quicken works.

Then: if you need an empty price history for "test" securities that have "real" ticker symbols, either:

Do not supply a ticker symbol when you create the new test security,

or

Delete the price history that Quicken downloads for those test securities before you enter any test transactions for those securities (but expect that any time you do any download that includes prices, you will see prices for any security in your Quicken data that has a valid ticker symbol).

(You can select multiple Quicken price history records just as you would select multiple files in Windows Explorer ... then click Delete to get rid of them all.)

I never used a ticker for any of these ficiticious securities, always "Added Manually"

I am experimenting with this simply because there is a difference in how Q treats ADD SHARES if there is a price given or not. If the ADD SHARES includes a price, then that transaction is reflected in the "Investments" column of the Investment Performance (IRR) report. If the ADD SHARES doesn't have a price, then Q does NOT reflect that in that column. The ADD SHARES have come from a number of mergers that have occurred in the past three months and the transactions downloaded from my FI's are using REMOVE SHARES/ADD SHARES to reflect the merger. (I believe) that none of these showed the actual cost basis (not sure I should expect the FI to include the cost basis) so I have had to manually adjust these transactions to reflect the actual cost (and hence get consistency for IRR calcs).

Now, I am happy to accept the the way Q works (as long as 1. its accuracte and 2. I can understand the "rules" - which are not always obvious) but - I cannot see why or where Q is adding price history to a ficticious security? If its doing that who knows what other things its up to? I can provider screenshots if needed.

/d

From your original post:

"Everytime I add a new test security (making sure that I've never used the security name before and that it is not in the Security List), it appears to 'acquire' some Price History."

The impression given by that statement was that the act of adding the new security produced prices in your price history ... so I explained how that could happen. You didn't say that you only noticed prices in your price history after you entered transactions.

Now you say you are not supplying ticker symbols for your test securities, and since Quicken can not download any prices ("quotes" or "historical") for securities that have no ticker symbol, I can deduce what is happening.

You are causing the prices to be entered in your price history by entering transactions in your investment account which have prices. Whenever you enter an investment transaction in Quicken that contains a security price, and there is no existing price for that security in your price history for that date, Quicken enters the price from the investment transaction into your price history. This is normal behavior and has been present from the first day I used Quicken.

"The impression given by that statement was that the act of adding the new security produced prices in your price history"

That's exactly what I'm observing. Let me summarize.

Check Securities List, ADD SHARES for a security name that doesn't exist (add manually without Ticker and without Price)

Check Summary tab for account, shows ONLY the Lot for the ADD'ed SHARES transaction (which had a zero Cost Basis since no price was entered)

Check Securities Detail, the *only* transaction in Transaction History for this security is the ADD SHARES, but Edit Price History shows one entry for a price of $67.265 on 2/22/06.

In that TEST account there are no trannsactions date 2/22/06

For a FInd All of all transactions dates 2/22/06, there are a number of credit card and checking transactions, and some dividends ... nothing with a security name like the ficitious one I created. Checked for other ficitious security names that I'd ADD'ed.

"You are causing the prices to be entered in your price history by entering transactions in your investment account which have prices. Whenever you enter an investment transaction in Quicken that contains a security price, and there is no existing price for that security in your price history for that date, Quicken enters the price from the investment transaction into your price history. This is normal behavior and has been present from the first day I used Quicken. "

So I really can't see where Q is pick these prices up from? From the above I do not believe that I am causing prices to be entered. It still looks to me like Q is incorrectly associating price history.

/d

Doesn't happen for me.

Try creating a New Quicken file. Create the one investment account and enter that one Add Shares transaction.

The account is immaterial. Price history pertains to all transactions entered in any account. Likewise the Security Detail screen.

1.) Once you enter an investment transaction that places a price in the price history: even if you later delete that investment transaction, the price will remain in the price history. 2.) Once you have prices in your price history for a security, if you delete that security, then add it back ... it's price history will be restored.

So unless you have very carefully avoided ever creating a new test security with the same name as any test security you have ever created in that file before, you have probably left a price history trail. This would be immaterial if we were talking about real-world securities since a valid price history is just as valid after adding a real-world security back into your file as it was before you deleted the security.

Before you delete a security, you can select all the prices in its price history and delete them all at once. Then delete the security and re-add it and you should get an empty price history.

"So unless you have very carefully avoided ever creating a new test security with the same name as any test security you have ever created in that file before, you have probably left a price history trail."

That's exactly what I did. The security had unique and random names ... never used before. I am working on the assumption that there is a bug in Q that is picking up prices from somewhere else. (I have no doubt that creating a new file, new account would circumvent this, since I *suspect* that price history file would be tied to a single file.)

"This would be immaterial if we were talking about real-world securities since a valid price history is just as valid after adding a real-world security back into your file as it was before you deleted the security."

Sure, but (BUT) I am trying to experiment with this to understand Q's behaviour and all I am looking for is help in understanding how/where Q is picking this price up from. As I have mentioned, Q treats the Investment Performance (IRR) report, differently if there is a security price in the ADD SHARES transaction or not.

If the conclusion is that there is a bug in Q wrt picking up security prices when there are none, I can work around that. If I am doing something wrong (or if I am doing something that confuses Q), I'd like to know that so I can avoid this in the future.

/d

Pretty good memory to be able to guarantee that.

I have never seen it, nor ever read of it.

If it doesn't happen in a new file, it's almost certainly not a bug.

If you have some type of data corruption in your existing file, it's possible that is involved.

I told you how you can work around it; delete the prices.

John, Of course I can delete the prices ... again, I told you, I am trying to understand Q's behaviour not get a workaround. If you are not interested in understanding this, that's OK, but I am. I am using Q to make tax and investment decisions and the more I know about Q's quirks and bugs (and Q has a few!) the less likely I am to incorrectly interpret data that Q's provides me.

/d