Portfolio Value over time

I don't know about Quicken (I use Windows Q06 Dlx but am not an investment maven) but couldn't you just go to Yahoo or some such resource and download the historical prices, import into Excel and graph those?

Your value, per dollar, would follow that shape wouldn't it?

Just a thought.

Geo.

Well, account value is affected by deposit and withdrawal and thus deposit/withdrawal becomes confused with gain/loss which also affects account value...It would be better to track unrealized gain/loss + realized gain/loss.

Actually, no. I'm looking to chart the value over time of one or more of my accounts, through which a large variety of securities have passed over time along with dividends and the like. I'm looking to see how the value of the account has varied over time in absolute dollar terms and not just in terms of IRR for which there are predeterimened reports.

"Lawrence Haber" wrote

I probably can't be of much help because I use the Windows version of Quicken, but perhaps knowing what Quicken for Windows can do will give you some perspective.

You can not do what you ask in Quicken for Windows.

But I suspect that the fact you are asking the question you are asking is an indication that Q for the Mac can't do it either; since, if it were possible, I think it would be relatively simple to discover it.

The shortest reporting interval in Quicken for Windows is one week. (For me that is more detail than I could ever use; I am happy with reports at one month intervals).

And if I wanted to graph the value of my accounts at one week intervals since 2002, I would have to create multiple Quicken reports to export to Excel (because Quicken for Windows is limited to 100 intervals in a report).

Thanks I suspect you are correct and that there isn't a way to do this.

I am also a bit surprised that there aren't additional resources that have been created by people out there to fill in the limited repoprting and anal;ystics one gets from Quicken.

Or perhaps I've missed these?

"Lawrence Haber" wrote

I don't recall hearing of much along those lines.

One reason, I think, is that Intuit has never released an API for Quicken, as they have for QuickBooks.

But if you know an Excel wizard (or comparable), you might be able to get something done. I think it would take a tab delimited file of a Quicken Investment Transaction report, coupled with an export of Quicken security prices to a QIF file.

Well to start with, create a new accounting in the software. Enter a deposit, a buy, a sell, and a dividend. Now have W'ndows search for all files created or modified on that day but don't just have W'ndows search for all files find the configuration where W'ndows searches for all files including those in hidden folders and in system folders.

Now look at the files with a text editor to get some idea what kind of files they are...

You should be able to do a Net Worth report and customize with the accounts you want to track. Unfortunately the best you can do is weekly, but over 4 years, a daily graph would be pretty useless.