Mutual Fund Value shows zero in Account list

How can a "sell" in one account create a share balance in another account?

Your use of terminology indicates the source of the problem.

If you had Vanguard mutual funds held at Vanguard and you now have Wells Fargo mutual funds (different mutual funds) held at Wells Fargo; you didn't "convert" anything: you *sold* your funds at Vanguard and used the proceeds to *buy* funds at Wells Fargo. To record such events, you would use a Sell transaction and a transfer transaction in the FROM account (or combine them into one transaction as it sounds like you did) and a Buy transaction in the TO account. (The transfer in this case only transfers "cash"). You would need a sell and transfer (or a combined Sell/transfer) for each fund in the FROM account and a Buy transaction for each fund in the TO account. It sounds like you just forgot to record the Buy(s) in the Wells Fargo account.

If you had mutual funds at Vanguard and you merely moved your holdings to Wells Fargo, then you didn't sell anything, you just transferred holdings (or shares) and should have used a "Shares transferred between accounts" transaction for each fund in the FROM account.

(The "target" of "transfers" is not a "fund", but an "account". The only way a transfer of funds from any Quicken account to a Quicken investment account can cause a purchase in the TO account is if the TO account is a Quicken "Single Mutual Fund" account.)

"John Pollard" wrote in news:sL6be.14216$c24.2923 @attbi_s72:

John,

I'm not quite clear in the distinction above. How does one move holdings from one FI to another without selling one to buy the other? Is there an assumption here that these particular holdings exist in each FI, and that only the FI has changed? (just trying to understand the process here)

I have a situation where a former employer decided to change FIs recently (this month, in fact). Thus the funds I left in the 401k there have changed FIs... and I need to make the changes in Q. It would seem to me that a buy/sell would be necessary to process this changeover.

I'm having trouble getting the info from the aforementioned FIs relative to shares held at the end of Q1/05 and the subsequent sell/buy data. Hopefully, it will process in due course.

Changing brokers is not that uncommon; but one would certainly not want to be forced to sell all their holdings just to start dealing with a new broker. The brokers basically just hold the legal equivalent of your title to the securities, it is a relatively trivial matter for them to "hand over" the record of your ownership to another broker. My sense of it is that the only time there is even the possibility that changing fi's would cause a "forced" sale is if the new fi did not (could not) hold the same securities you had at the old fi. And I think that usually only involves mutual funds; but others here with more knowledge in the investment area may be able to give you a better explanation.

The "distinction" is: what happened in the real world. If you sold shares at one fi, then used the cash to buy shares (of the same or different securities) at a different fi, then you record a sale/transfer of cash/buy in Quicken. If you just pass the record of your ownership from one fi to another, you use a transfer-shares transaction in Quicken.

If you have new (different) funds at the new fi, definitely you need a sale/transfer-cash/buy. If you are just transferring the record of ownership of the same securities, then you should not need to sell anything.

That will be the key, I think; let Quicken reflect what happened in the real world.

"John Pollard" wrote in news:4O8be.14335$WI3.2768 @attbi_s71:

Makes sense. I was limiting my thinking to mutual funds.. which is but one option of the investment opportunities. I just needed to expand my thinking past my current scenario.

Thanks.

Each of the mutual fund accounts was created as "single mutual fund", so they only have shares of themselves. I don't understand the problem with what I did from your explanation. I did go into the target account and it had listed the transaction as a purchase from the cash generated by the sale transaction. I corrected the price and the "from" account entry and that made the fund share balance correct, just the value was incorrect in reports since it showed zero dollar worth. Regardless of how I got there, how can a fund that shows it has 1000 plus shares at $11 per share correctly, show up as zero in the net worth calculation?

One way: If the date of the transaction did not fall within the date of the report. Another way: if there is a zero price for the security dated after the date of the purchase.

good point, although since I ran a current net worth report and the transaction date of the sale was last fall, there would have been a valid date for it.

Actually there were two points; it remains to be seen how good they are. :) What about a future price of zero? If you specify "all dates" in a Net Worth report and you have a future price of zero for a security, the security will show up in the Net Worth report with a zero value (even if "today's" price is correct).

(Also, where exactly are you seeing "a fund that shows it has

I should have made this a little clearer: if you have a future price and the date of that price falls within the date range of the report, that price will be used for the security. So if you have a price of $0.00 dated 12-31-2005 and you run a Net Worth report during the year 2005 with a date range of "Current Year", that security will have a value of zero in the report.