Yield

I am sure I am missing something, but in the INVESTMENT PERFORMANCE report under the INVESTING report category, what is wrong with the 'Average Annual Return' that it purports to provide?

Andrew:

You're not missing something, Quicken is. At least on my report, the whole column is blank (where, in fact, there has been income).

OTOH, maybe I'M missing something. Since virtually all reports are not showing income-oriented variables, I probably haven't set a relevent switch somewhere.

to show Est. Income in Portfolio one has to enter E/I in the Security List - (select a security) - Edit - Additional Info field (annual div per share)

for some reason (unless changed in Q2010) Q does not automatically fill in the data from actual income numbers.

Thanks for your reply. It tells me that the Investment Performance report is basically not producing what I thought it did. I can not imagine circumstances under which I'd want to enter these numbers, then maintain them for current dividends.

The Investment Income report gives me someting closer to what I'm looking for ... actual earned income over past periods. I was looking for other reports that would give actual past earned income, but broken out more flexibly than permitted by Investment Income.

I have no idea what the problem is, just a couple of comments related to what I've read so far - the meaning of which, I am not completely clear.

Offhand, I can't think of any report where you would find a blank column (if the column data was optional, and not selected ... there would be no "column" to be blank - the column would be "missing"); nor any report where a column normally contained amounts ... and the heading was present but amounts were blank (when an amount is zero, it's displayed as 0.00, or

0 when rounding is selected). But you can eliminate entire columns from the Investment > Performance report, including the Returns and Average Annual Returns column (see the Display tab in the Customize dialog).

I have seen some investment reports where entire *rows* are blank ... this can happen when a non-investment account has been changed so it appears in the "Investing" group of accounts (a savings account, perhaps, that one wants to treat as an investment), and that account is included in some investment reports. If such an investment report selected only those non-investment accounts, it might produce something fairly baffling to view.

I also don't think any "Reports" menu report uses "estimated income".

John, I don't know if it will be useful, but here are the right few columns of a sample Investment Transactions report (letters and numbers are blocked out). The last column is blank (except for one number ... the TOTAL, which is a dummy number anyhow).

Investment Performance - Last 12 months

5/15/2009 through 5/14/2010

Investments Returns Avg.?Annu...

xxx,xxx.xx*

xxx,xxx.xx

x,xxx.xx

x,xxx.xx

xx,xxx.xx

x,xxx.xx

x.xx

xx.xx

xx.xx

xx,xxx.xx

xxx,xxx.xx

x.xx

x.xx

xxx,xxx.xx

xx,xxx.xx

xxx.xx

x.xx

xxx.xx

x.xx

xxx,xxx.xx

xx.xx

xx,xxx.xx

xxx,xxx.xx

xxx,xxx.xx*

xxx,xxx.xx* xxx,xxx.xx* xx.xx*%

It appears you may have a report with Subtotals set to "Don't subtotal", so there's no row but the report total row that qualifies to have an Average Annual Return value. Also it appears you have "placeholders", in one or more accounts, which may interfere with accurate AAR values.

What do you see in the AAR column when you subtotal on Account, or Security, or some other subtotal of interest.

[Why do you say the report total for Average Annual Return is "dummy number"; do you mean it may be inaccurate because of the placeholders?]

I see numbers only on the TOTAL row, as you say. The values don't make any sense (as you say).

Yes ... that's what I mean.

Are you saying you subtotalled on, say, security and saw no AAR subtotals? The AAR subtotals were blank?

[I didn't say the numbers don't make any sense; I couldn't know that. It is possible to have accurate underlying data for placeholders, such that report values should be meaningful.]

If you don't feel the reports reflect your real-world reality; you can either provide accurate history for each placeholder (see the "Enter Cost" link in a placeholder); or delete the placeholders (and delete any transactions linked to them), then enter all the missing actual transactions. [For my data, I prefer the second approach ... though I never accept any placeholders in the first place, so I've none to delete.]

John, you're going over my head.

Yes, if I request subtotals, e.g., for securities, I do get AAR subtotals (as you suggest). But I don't understand why I would only get the AAR for subtotals, not for the detailed lines.

Also, what's a placeholder? I don't ever recall putting in placeholders. The word sounds like incomplete transactios, but I've always completed transactions.

Do you know of a source for details of Quicken and, for example, each field of the reports it produces? I am finding that without decent documentation, and without training in accounting, I'm quite lost.

I think AAR only has meaning when measured over time ... the individual lines in the Investment Performance report are for a single date.

"Placeholder" is another name for a Quicken "Adjust Share Balance" transaction ... a transaction which states that you owned an exact number of shares of a particular security on a specific date. When such a transaction exists, Quicken will insure that you will always own that number of shares of that security on that date. One thing that permits you to do, is to avoid entering the historical transactions for a security (the Buys, Sells, Reinvestments, etc.), that you might not have available if they occured too far in the past.

But if all the Buy, Sell, Reinvest, etc. transactions for a security are not entered in Quicken ... Quicken can not always provide accurate values for things like AAR. That's why those asterisks are alongside the numbers in your report, and why there is probably a line at the bottom of the report that says "*Placeholder entries for missing data are used in these calculations".

To see, and deal with, placeholders: Edit > Preferences > Quicken Preferences > Investment transactions and put a check mark in the box to "Show hidden transactions". Then in investment account "Transactions" tabs, placeholders will appear as transactions with an "Action" value of "Entry", and they will tell you how many shares they are guaranteeing you hold of that security on that date ... and how many shares Quicken had to add, or subtract, to insure the share balance remained "correct".

If you always enter every investment transaction in Quicken correctly, you will normally not need, nor be offered, placeholders.

When Quicken completes a download of investment transactions, it compares the "holdings" your fi downloaded, with the holdings you have in Quicken. If there is a difference, Quicken offers to enter one or more placeholders to force your Quicken holdings to agree with the holdings your fi downloaded.

I believe you will find some pretty decent information in the Quicken Help (menu choice) on Placeholders.

Also, Quicken's context sensitive Help can be useful. To see an example, initiate an "Adjust Share Balance" transaction (using the "Enter Transactions" button), then click the small yellow circle with the question mark in the middle, to see info on the Adjust Share Balance transaction, with links to additional info.

Using Q2008 Premier I just ran an Investment Performance Report and it looked just like yours.

The first entry is Beg Mkt Val and the last is End Mkt Val followed by a total line with AAR ONLY in that line.

Therefor it is a calculation over the time period of the report and not for each "Return" item date shown.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

You might find interesting the swamp of alligators I now find myself in.

I've been investing a long time. My earliest transactions are back in the 1950's. (I haven't been using Quicken that long ... it hasn't existed for nearly that long. And I had never heard of a computer until the mid 1950s). I also imagined myself a pretty careful user of Quicken, so I was at first taken back at the suggestion that I had PLACEHOLDERS! YUK!

Well, I discovered I have over 50 placeholders. Must of them are under the radar (e.g., 0.0001 shares). If the balance doesn't match, adjust it. And there may even be a few mistakes in there. In most cases I just need to go through the work of re-entering historical transactions of minimal amounts to get rid of the placeholders ... either that or tolerate the warning on the Investment Performance report.

Up to now all my investment dividends have been reinvested. But I'm beginning to need income, as I'm on a pension that doesn't increase with the COLA. So I'm starting to learn what it takes to be an "income investor". And I'm exercising brain cells that I haven't used in years.

Fortunately, there's a guy named John Pollard that always seems to be there to get me out of trouble.

One caution: any transaction that is "linked" (my term) to a placeholder will never be able to affect the cash balance in the account.

If one is trying to get holdings current without having to worry about where the cash came from for things like Buy transactions, being able to enter transactions that do not affect cash may be a good thing.

But if the intent is to have every transaction entered correctly, including the source of the cash used for Buy transactions, allowing a transaction to become linked to a placeholder is not necessary, will be sort-of self defeating, and manages to confuse a lot of users.

Once a transaction becomes linked to a placeholder (you can tell when one is: it will have "N/A" in the Cash Amt column), it will *never* have any effect on the cash balance of the account ... even if you delete the placeholder to which it is linked.

So if the desire is to eliminate all placeholders and all placeholder effects; first you must delete the placeholders, then you must delete their linked transactions, then re-enter the linked transactions. Not a fun prospect.

On the other hand, if your actual transactions are correct (so each placeholder has an adjustment of zero shares), it may not be necessary to delete the placeholders. I suspect the warnings will still appear in reports (though I have not verified this), but if you know your historical transactions are correct, I would think you could ignore the placeholder warnings in reports (I haven't verified that either).