Quicken is pretty decent at allowing users to tweak reports, but like xshoppingx says, sometimes their logic for defaults falls a bit short.
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No defaults will satisfy all users; it's hard to question Quicken's "logic" when you don't know what all other users want for defaults.
But you can create your own default reports.
Go to Reports > Reports and Graphs Center. Click the "Manage Saved Reports" button and create a new Folder for saved reports. You could call it, "My Default Reports", for example
From the Reports menu, open a report whose defaults you don't like. Customize that report the way you'd like it to appear when you first open it.
"Save" that customized report (if it was the Spending by Category report, for example, you could name it "Default Spending by Category"). Save the report to the "My Default Reports" folder you created above.
Do the same for all reports whose defaults you want to change.
When you next want to create/use one of those reports, open the "My Default Reports" folder and choose the report from there. [Make sure you do not Save that report back into the My Default Reports folder ... unless you are intentionally trying to change its defaults.]