Download bond price

Probably not, unless the bond trades on an exchange using a ticker symbol.

Tom Young

If you hold the bond at a brokerage from which you can download, they may (should, I think) download your bond prices ... but possibly only when there are also actual transactions to download.

I gave it a try with one of my accounts (Etrade) and bond prices

*were* updated even though there were no transactions.

Tom Young

I've never been able to pin down the specifics of this, but I frequently don't get bond prices when I think they've changed. Anecdotally, I noticed that it seemed it was the days I had no transactions downloaded that I didn't get bond prices ... but I had recently been coming to think that was not likely the criteria. But I put out the caveat, since I do know there are days when I don't get bond prices ... just not necessarily why.

[My bonds are held at Smith Barney.]

Downloads from financial institutions link to Quicken securities by CUSIP number; once you have told Quicken that your Quicken security, ABC, is the same as the downloaded security, American Broadcasting Company, Quicken knows the CUSIP number of the Quicken security and uses that CUSIP number to know which future downloaded transactions, and holdings, pertain to which Quicken security.

Each download from your investment financial institution should include your holdings at that fi; and the holdings should include the price/share of each security, as of the date of the holdings.

John,

So if I understand you correctly. If I own a bond and it is held in a brokerage account, I could possibly get a price update - at least on the days where there was activity - if Quicken asks me to match the security between the download and Quicken. Otherwise if it does not, I would have to manually input the price. Also there is now way to get a price of a bond held outside of a broker. I base this on the fact that I can't enter a CUSIP number (even though I could find one) into Quicken.

Oilcan

-----Orig> >> >>

Downloads from financial institutions link to Quicken securities by CUSIP number; once you have told Quicken that your Quicken security, ABC, is the same as the downloaded security, American Broadcasting Company, Quicken knows the CUSIP number of the Quicken security and uses that CUSIP number to know which future downloaded transactions, and holdings, pertain to which Quicken security.

Each download from your investment financial institution should include your holdings at that fi; and the holdings should include the price/share of each security, as of the date of the holdings.

If you are already successfully downloading transactions from your broker, you have already matched the downloaded securities with your Quicken securities, so Quicken already knows the CUSIP number for the securities held at your broker.

Yes, you can get prices for any of those securities, but I can not tell you exactly what other conditions may apply. I get bond prices for the bonds I own at Smith Barney as a result of downloading, but I think not with every download.

I know of no way to do this.

I think the only other electronic sources of bond prices (other than your own broker) must be paid for. And even then, there is no guarantee that source will provide prices in a manner usable by Quicken.

[Naturally you can manually enter bond prices: there is no need for a ticker symbol or a CUSIP number to do that.] [At one time, the CUSIP number field was visible and editable in Quicken, but I think that's no longer the case. Even so, just having the CUSIP number would only be part of the problem of getting prices for bonds not held at an institution that downloaded to Quicken using OFX.]

Well, after a week of downloading bond prices successfully from Etrade on days when there were no transactions, today I had no success in downloading bond prices from Etrade, another day with no transactions. Who knows?

Tom Young

Thanks for the update. Perhaps in time, with enough input, we will be able to figure out what the requirements are to get price updates from financial institutions.

Just to throw another monkey-wrench into the works: there is more than one way for an fi to supply prices. And it seems to me that there shouldn't be any need for multiple ways, but I am definitely seeing the differences.

For securities like publicly tranded bonds, I get prices from the broker where I own the bonds ... even if there are not transactions involving.

(As I mentioned before, I used to think I needed to have at least one transaction of some type - even if not for any bond - that would download for the fi, if I was to see any prices for securities owned at the fi whose prices were not available via Quicken quote download ... but I have since determined that is not the criteria).

But I have other financial institutions where I own securities whose prices can not be downloaded via Quicken "quote download" ... and which can not be updated by any download that does not include any transactions. TIAA-CREF is one such institution.

TIAA-CREF is not very user friendly, but at some point (I think prior to the time when Quicken would derive price updates from downloaded "holdings"), TIAA-CREF decided that they would provide prices for their "private" securities by downloading an "Add Shares" transaction for zero shares but with a price/share. When such a transaction is "Accepted", its price/share will update your Quicken price history. You can then delete the transaction, and the price history price will remain.

My suspicion is that TIAA-CREF can not rely on the download of holdings to get their security prices updated, because their securities do not have CUSIP numbers.

Perhaps new updates to the OFX specs will allow institutions like TIAA-CREF to have their downloaded holdings make price/share updates available to Personal Financial Software without the need for phoney Add Shares transactions ... and maybe, just maybe, institutions like TIAA-CREF will take advantage of the opportunity.

I emailed Etrade to ask why I didn't get prices for 4/21 - 4/22 when I did get prices for 4/14 - 4/18, and today (4/23), as it turns out.

An Etrade tech person called me and said that prices *don't* come from Etrade, but from Intuit. He believes that Intuit sets up a customer profile when it queries a FI and records CUSIP identifiers that it uses to pass prices down to Quicken. Ergo, the problem with the lack of price downloads was not with Etrade, not with something on my end, but with Intuit.

Tom Young

Based solely on the info you've provided, I tend to think you're jumping to a conclusion. It certainly is possible that Intuit is getting it wrong, but if so, they're doing it in an uncommon and unlikely way.

As far as I know, the OFX specs (that control the way in which downloads are done and their content) has always allowed for downloads from investment financial institutions to contain "holdings" in addition to transactions. And I think the OFX spec actually recommends that holdings be provided.

It is the downloaded holdings that contain prices for the securities held at that institution, and every time I've ever checked, my downloads do include those holdings (including the prices).

The holdings also include an "as of" date, and that date is not always the date of the download. I downloaded from Smith Barney on April 23rd at about 7:30pm CDT. But my downloaded holdings were dated April 22, so the bonds I hold at Smith Barney did not get prices for the 23rd. [I did not set the download up as a test, so I did not check to see if my prices for the 22nd were changed as a result of the download.]

I certainly don't attribute that lack of bond prices on the 23rd to Intuit; if Smith Barney did not provide holdings for the date I downloaded, Intuit could hardly have compensated for that.

I may have the *wrong* conclusion but if so it's because what the tech told me was wrong, not because I'm jumping to it.

He was very clear - but maybe incorrect - that prices came from Intuit, and when he told me that I expressed my astonishment that for the 1st 5 days of price downloads that Intuit would have the exact same price as Etrade. (I logged into Etrade and checked their prices after Quicken's One Step Update.) For some reason I thought Etrade provided ending prices based on some Etrade algorithm (Scientific Wild- Assed Guess) but he told me that Etrade pulls their prices from Bloomberg and that Intuit probably does the same, hence the prices would match.

I've never looked looked at the OFX specs so I'm not in a position to answer your response with any specifics, but the information from the FI clearly goes through the Intuit servers so there's at least the possibility the Intuit can insert a price.

Maybe we should establish a database of prices of widely-held bonds from different FI's and see if we can crack the code.

Tom Young

My reply said: "Based solely on the info you've provided"....

I suggest you check with your fi again.

If Quicken/Intuit has access to (and has agreed to provide) bond prices from a source other than the holdings provided by your financial institution, it is news to me ... I anxiously await proof of this assertion.

The fact that the data passes through Intut's servers doesn't provide any evidence that Intuit has separate access to bond prices. Indeed, I think if you do some research, you'll find that bond prices are jealously guarded by financial institution ... and no one can download them via Quicken's price download. Getting bond prices independently from your broker costs money.

I do not believe that Intuit intends to provide independent access (access not provided by your financial institution) to bond prices. I welcome legitmate evidence to the contrary.

I have no objection to this, or any other, means of finding the source of a problem. If someone wants to start the ball rolling, I will contribute whatever I can ... as long as it doesn't require me to stay up later than I like. :)

But for starters, I suggest that those who are concerned about not getting bond prices from their fi, can start the ball rolling. They can stay awake longer than some of us are willing to, and download from their financial institutions late at night. It those users download late at night, and do not get bond prices; let them check their OFXlog to see what the date of their "holdings" is. It any user finds their downloaded holdings dated on the date they downloaded, but their bond prices do not get updated for that same date ... please post here.

FWIW: here is some additional info.

On Friday April 25th at 8:15 pm CDT, I did a One Step Update which included a download from Smith Barney. No April 25th bond prices. Checked the OFXlog; the downloaded Smith Barney holdings prices were dated April 24.

Today, Saturday April 26th at 8:50 am CDT, I did a direct download from Smith Barney, and got bond prices for April 25th, which is the same as the "as of" date for the prices in the Smith Barney downloaded holdings.

It appears to me that sometime between 04-25-08 at 8:15 pm and

04-26-08 at 8:50 am, Smith Barney updated the holdings that they make available to Quicken to contain data for April 25.

In a follow-up to my ongoing problem with Quicken's OFXLOG showing the correct price and date for the 3 bonds in question but Quicken slotting the price into "tomorrow's" price line in the Price History (a different thread in this newsgroup and Quicken's forums) I spoke to Etrade again... different guy from last time. He said this problem is a known issue and that Etrade is dealing with Quicken about the issue. He, too, insisted that prices *come from Quicken* and that the issue in on Quicken's end, not Etrade's. He was adamant that Quicken prices *everything* - bonds, stocks, etc. - which could explain why I've noticed small stock price discrepancies between the FI and Quicken in the past.

Tom Young

OK, finally, FINALLY!, Quicken came clean and admitted that there is a problem with Etrade price updates and that the problem IS on Quicken's end. The Quicken tech I spoke to also confirmed that SECURITY PRICES COME FROM QUICKEN, NOT FROM ETRADE. (Based solely on what I just stated there, I hope I didn't jump to any conclusions.)

Tom Young

I am working on gathering more information on this subject; when enough information becomes available to make it usable, I'll post it here; then I'll leave it to you, and others, to decide whether you may have been too anxious to believe certain things.

Here's a good place to start because my wording in previous posts may have contributed to a mis-understanding on your part.

In a diferent thread here you posted that you found a date in your OFXlog for your ETrade account that was one day earlier than the prices you found in your Quicken price history (that is: the today's prices were being entered into Quicken with tomorrow's date).

The OFXlog date you reported was identified by the tag "DTASOF", but that's not the correct tag/date for the prices that are downloaded in the holdings from your financial institution. The correct tag is "DTPRICEASOF, and there should be one of those tags (and one price) for each security you hold. The DTPRICEASOF date should be the date that Quicken uses for any price it puts in your Quicken price history. [I should have noted this when you first posted it, but sometimes we just overlook the obvious.]

Well, it's good to know that; looking more closely at the OFXLOG I

*do* find a DTPRICEASOF field and that looks to be the source of the problem.

For example I see the following for one of the bonds:

86.694

20080524053800.000 FORD MOTOR CREDIT CO GLOBAL NOTE 7.00% 1

FORD MOTOR CREDIT CO GLOBAL NOTE 7.00% 10/01/2013

345397TZ6 86.694000 20080523170000.000

I have no idea where the differing date/time information is coming from but it looks like Quicken is using the DTPRICEASOF to fill its Price History list.

Tom Young