Investment - "Bought" not changing cash balance
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I know of no situation in which "N/A" appears in the Cash Amt column of an investment account unless there is a Placeholder transaction (an Adjust Share Balance transaction) in the account that applies to the transaction for the security with "N/A" in the Cash Amt column. The original poster never provides any evidence to demonstrate that there is no placeholder in the account ... nor any evidence to demonstrate that he knows how to determine whether there is a placeholder in the account.
The op's claim has been posted quite a few times over the years, and I can only assume that none of those posters know how to determine whether there is a placeholder in the investment account. In addition to that, it also appears that many users do not realize how some placeholders get into investment accounts.
While the original post in the linked discussion did not provide much in the way of useful details to help diagnose the problem, a subsequent post by the original poster hinted at the source of his confusion.
In a subsequent post, the op said, " ... since I only had the two transactions, I just deleted it and set it up over again. It worked when I left everything at 0 for setup ....".
My interpretation of the op's confusing comment is that when he "deleted it", he deleted the newly created investment account, then added a new investment account ... and during that new account setup process, did not specify what securities were owned in the account. I believe that process eliminated the Placeholders the op originally had.
During the creation of a new Quicken investment account, Quicken provides a dialog titled, "Quicken Account Setup What securities are in this account". If the user enters the names, and number of shares, of securities held in the account during this new account setup process; Quicken creates a Placeholder (an Adjust Share Balance transaction) for every security named in the "What securities are in this account" dialog.
And if the user has not told Quicken to, "Show hidden [investment] transactions", the user will never see those placeholders in the investment account Transaction List. That option to see Placeholders is found at Edit > Preferences > Investment transactions.
Which brings up the notion of how to identify a "Placeholder", something which all too many users do not know how to do. In an investment account "Transaction List" (the investment account equivalent of a non-investment account register), Placeholders are identified by an "Action" value of "Entry". In a Banking > Transaction report or an Investment > Transaction report, placeholders are identified by the text, "*Placeholder" in the "Num" column or the "Action" column, respectively.