Money market fund shows a loss

"David Arnstein"

Using Quicken 2012 with a LONG history.

I have a money market fund that is showing a loss.

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I have examined every transaction for that fund, in the problematic account.

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I'm not sure the problem need be with a transaction.

Have you checked the Quicken price history for the fund?

Investing > Investing Tools > Security Detail View

Select the security. Then Update > Edit Price History.

Look for non-one dollar prices.

If that doesn't turn up anything, you can try recalculating the register.

In the Transaction List of the account where you believe the problem lies, hold down CTRL while clicking the letter z. When it works, you should see a message saying "Recalculate all transactions?" with OK and Cancel buttons.

I just did. Every entry is $1.00.

I was able to do this for the brokerage register. I was unable to bring up this message for the linked cash register, perhaps that does not matter.

Anyway, my "loss" problem is still in effect. Any other suggestions.

In any case, Thank you John. I learned something from your post.

I was wondering if this MMF was in the Savings side or the Investment side ? having some bank MMF setup in the Savings side, along with the various Investment MMF direct funds from Fidelity, Schwab, Vanguard, etc.

I can only really see details on the Investment side..... and mine of course show ->

Shares = Market Value = Cost Basis

The share price could have been wacked at some point and was not equal to $1.00 when some minor add/subtract took place. I do recall seeing that happen recently.

I have also seen where the downloaded file doesn't properly account for the transaction - and shares are added or subtracted - but nothing else.

Should ReinvDiv be ReinvDivX or DivX be Div ?

Hello Zaidy,

Those actions are exactly what I see. Perhaps the reason is that my investment account in Quicken is linked to a cash account. This linkage was set up in Quicken automatically, many years ago. That is the way Quicken used to work. I believe that the "X" stands for "transfer" (to/from linked cash account).

Does the loss show in Portfolio view?

If so, you can set "Group by:" to Accounts, "Show" to any view (e.g. Tax Implications) that shows Gain/Loss, and then step thru dates ("As of:") until you find the earliest time at which the problem occurs. If you like, you can customize the view to eliminate accounts and securities that aren't relevant to your problem.

You can also click the "+" next to a security name to see the individual lot statuses as of that date.

The above may expose the location of an unprintable garbage character in a transaction or a price history entry. Sometimes garbage characters in data can cause unpredictable calculation errors [and maybe even *re*calculation errors!].

I also vaguely remember a case many years ago where correcting the cost of a purchase left me with correct cost bases for (the remaining portion of) individual lots but with an incorrect total. I had to delete and reenter both the purchase and all subsequent sales to fix the problem. I can't recall whether or not I first tried recalculating the register.

Since you have a linked cash account then ReinvDiv should not be there. DivX and BoughtX combination take care of that function.

I think that your ReinvDiv are duplications and your share totals are now wrong. For the dates of your ReinvDiv compare to DivX and BoughtX transactions.

Have you checked your share totals against 1099s or the funds web site info?

Excellent suggestion Jerry. Using your method, I was able to isolate a single SoldX transaction for the money market fund. It caused the problem, somehow.

I tried choosing new Lots for the transaction. That did not fix the problem. Why should it? Every single lot had a share price of $1.

Then I simply deleted the transaction and typed it in again. Problem solved.

I have a much bigger problem now. I cannot trust any of Quicken's gain/loss numbers. From now on, I will just use Quicken as a register for recording transactions. The reports are useless.

I change "almost" all of my DivX and IntIncX transactions in my linked cash accounts. That way I can assign an appropriate category (e.g., federal tax exempt, state tax exempt, totally exempt, etc.). One exception is where DivX is paid and then additional shares are purchased; some securities at my brokerage (e.g., MSFT) do it that way instead of a simple ReinvDiv, especially when the reinvested amount is a little less than the dividend.

Also, I do use the capital gains report every year. In many cases, my brokerage does not know the cost basis (Forms 8949 this year will be lots of fun). I own several municipal bonds, some bought at a premium, and one cannot use the actual purchase price, but must amortize the premium because you cannot get a double tax benefit. One feature of the capital gains report I haven't figured out how to "fix" is that when I transfer securities from one account to another (I.e., change brokerages) all the transferred securities appear in the report with zero gain or loss.