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Problem with "short position" message

I am in the process of selling my Home Depot shares. I bought them originally in 1992 and everything looked fine with all the splits until the stock split on 12/30/99 which was a 3:2 split. After that entry, my portfolio view said I had 450 shares but when I clicked on the + to see the lot number, it said 449.999999. I had only bought the shares once (50 sh) and the rest of the share increase was all due to splits, so I only had one "lot". Previously the shares owned and lot shares were always the same with the splits. Then I sold 100 shares in 2003 and the shares owned and lot shares again differed. Shares owned said 350 and the lot shares said

349.99975. Now I have sold all my shares but Quicken won't let me sell 350 nor will it let me sell the 349.99975 without getting the message, "You should use 2 transactions, one to sell the shares you hold and one to create your short position" I don't even know what that means exactly because I've never dealt in short selling. I have tried adusting the split in 12/1999 to make it like 3.00001:2 and that brought the shares equal but when I went to sell them, I still get the same message. So I ended up entering 349.998899 share to sell for the final sale, (although it should have been 350) and now I am left with .001101 shares still owned and the lot shares says .000815. I just want to get rid of all the shares so Home Depot doesn't show up in my account since I really don't own it. I even made a copy of my Quicken file and ran a validate on it and nothing showed up. I checked and saw that all my transactions were entered right. Does anyone have a fix to get rid of these shares. If I try to remove them, I get a "you are creating a short sell" message or something like that. I am using Q 2006.Thanks for any help with this frustration.

Barbara Lindholm

Reply to
Barbara Lindholm
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Hi, Barbara.

This is a familiar problem. It's not really Quicken's fault, except that their programmers should have learned how to handle it by now. It's just a combination of the rounding problem that we learned about way back in elementary school, when we had to round 1/3 to .333..., compounded by the computer's use of binary numbers that have to be converted to our familiar decimal system so that we humans can understand it. (Of course you are not selling short, which means to sell shares you've borrowed to take advantage of today's price, promising to pay back your borrowing with shares you will buy - hopefully cheaper - in the future. But, since Quicken thinks you are selling more shares than you own, even just a tiny fraction, Quicken doesn't know any other way to handle this sale.)

There are a couple of ways for you to handle this. The best (in my view) is to go back and make sure each entry you've made has resulted in a whole number of shares after each transaction. You might have to, in chronological order, delete each of your existing entries and re-enter it, being sure to enter the exact amount in dollars and cents and verifying that the number of shares held is a whole integer after each transaction.

Another way is to tell Quicken to "Sell all shares in this account", rather than to sell 350 shares. You'll have to double-check that the "Total sale" dollars and cents are accurate, because the arithmetic (number of shares * price per share) might be off slightly, but the actual amount you received is more important that the calculation. And the "all shares" option should let Quicken clear whatever odd fractions it might have recorded.

A third way is to Adjust the number of shares. Several regulars here have done that, but I haven't, so I'll let them tell you how to do it.

RC

Reply to
R. C. White

Thank you so much R.C. White. This is the second time you have helped me out of a confusing situation. I re-entered the stock splits and then I had to adjust one of the splits to 3.0001:2 to make both the owned shares and lot shares be equal. There were minute fractional shares in each so I just removed them and after that, every transaction was right and I was able to sell all the shares. So thanks again for your very knowledgeable assistance!

Reply to
Barbara Lindholm

Hi, Barbara.

You're welcome! ; Thank you so much R.C. White. This is the second time you have helped me

Reply to
R. C. White

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