Quicken 2008: Sort Investments by Debt/Equity Ratio Incorrect

Did you try "Return (%) YTD"; it's off too.

The problem has existed with that "column" since at least Q2005, but I can't say that the underlying (reported) cause is the same.

It has been reported that when the Porfolio is grouped by Security and sorted by "Return (%) YTD", Quicken adds the Return percentage of the security once for each account in which the security is held, then sorts on that total.

While I see that the "Return (%) YTD" percentage does not sort correctly, it's not clear to me that it is off due to the reported cause. A quick glance at my data does suggest that owning the security in multiple accounts may be part of the problem.

John,

Thanks. I have my securities grouped by Security and I do own them in two different accounts. But, I have identical portfolios in both. So, even if Quicken somehow weights the values based on ownership, it wouldn't make any difference in my case.

I know you're on this group and in the official Intuit ones. But, I Googled the whole web and specifically searched Intuit's and I can't find any information about this. Where do you find all this? The closest I can up with is Quicken's inability to sort % Returns based on any holding period greater than a person owned the stock (IOW, it wants to calculate return data from a person's holdings and not from an official data base, so unless a person owned the stock for the required period, there's no data to sort -- that's still the case in Q08).

Dave

John,

Specifically on the Return (%) YTD: with my data (two identically stocked accounts), my data sorts correctly on that field. But, I'm showing 5 stocks with N/A for their Return (%) YTD. I mentioned in my other branch of this thread that Quicken won't calculate returns for periods greater than we've owned a stock. But, how can it not calculate a YTD value?

I also wonder if, in your case (different stocks in different accounts), it "pro-rates" the value it's sorting on based on a percentage of the year owned? Maybe the displayed value is the actual Return (%) YTD but it's sorted on ((Return (%) YTD) / (% of year owned))?

Dave

I remembered that there was something about sorting on Return % YTD in the Intuit Forums, so I searched there for "sort portfolio return". There were quite a few hits, but one thread (SORTing by % RETURN YTD) identified the sorting problem. The op in the thread spelled out the problem, another poster added the notion that the return percentages were being added together for each account where the security is held.

I see the same thing mentioned in "SORTing by % RETURN YTD" in Q2005 and Q2008.

Did you own those stocks on Jan 1, 2007?

John,

No. I didn't own the stocks that are showing as N/A on the first of the year. That's apparently the problem. I don't know why it would be though. According to Quicken's description of "Return (%) YTD" (RPY), it's supposed to be calculated as "[c]hange in value, plus dividends, capital gains, and return of capital (year to date)." I can put those columns (or the one's they derive from) on the same report with RPY (except for Return of Capital) and they all have valid numbers. It's hard to understand why Quicken doesn't check for a purchase date within the current year instead of just looking at the start of the year on a YTD calculation.

Dave

I guess it's probably a matter of interpretation. On one hand, if you were going to compare YTD stock performance, you'd probably want to have that performance "normalized" over the same period. Otherwise, you might sell a winning stock just because you've only owned it one day and its YTD number compared badly to other stock you've owned since the beginning of the year. OTOH, if you currently own a stock, no matter how short the period, you probably want to see how it's performing YTD and not just see a big ol' N/A. I assume anything not owned and merely sitting in a Watch List will suffer the same problem.

I'm sure this has been hashed to death across the boards since the problem first reared its head. So, there's no need to continue it here. The incorrect sorting of whatever numbers do show is definitely an error and Intuit needs to fix that.

Dave

That was going to be my comment to your previous post.

I haven't done a lot of research, but I think there are some "return" metrics that don't require you to own the security for any particular length of time.

And I know there is an option to set the "starting date" for several return calculations which would help allow one to normalize the results to use in comparing different securities that had been owned for different time periods.