Setup Fidelity portfolio with all history

[lite1]

Newbie using Personal edition. Was able to use New Portfolio Wizard, but it only downloaded 90 days of history from Fidelity Investments (not the Fidelity NetBenefits option). Called Fidelity who indicated that only Quicken can download a QIF with upto 24 months of transaction history. (Asked rep to let management know that forcing user to use Quicken and making it inconvenient for other software use was not customer friendly policy.) Can download CSV in 90 day chunks - super inconvenient and don't think FM will use CSV data.

How do you suggest setting up new sub-portfolio and getting Fidelity data going back to Feb. 2011? Again, much thanks ...

[Mark]

Hi lite1,

The limitation of 90 days is on their OFX server, and that limit will apply to any program using their OFX server, including Quicken. I believe the rep may have been referring to the option to be able to download a QIF file through their web server (different than their OFX server) that you could then import into Quicken. You can also import a QIF file into Fund Manager. So, if you can download a QIF file from their web site for the past 24 months, I would suggest doing that, and importing it into Fund Manager with "File / Import / Transactions / Quicken (*.QIF)...". After that, you can start retrieving transactions going forward. You'll want to just make sure you download at least every 90 days, since that is all the history they keep on their OFX server.

[lite1]

As usual, thx Mark for being so helpful and timely. I will rpt back here only if Fidelity gives me a way to download a 24 month QIF file, which would make the setup of new port in FM much easier.

Later 9.24.2012: Fidelity certainly does NOT make it easy. You can not get a QIF file by itself, but can only do it through Quicken. Rather than download things into Quicken and then export it from there as another QIF and then into FM, I decided to simply do my year and half of transactions as manual entry. I am not familiar enough with Quicken and the small test that I did with importing and exporting from Quicken did not look promising. At least now that I have the portfolio set and reconciled between FM and Fidelity future transactions will be able to be imported. It seems that each of the three brokerages that I have brought into FM so far has its own quirks, roadblocks, and gotchas, just to make the whole money game that much more interesting. The upside is that I now feel very intimate with a great deal of my raw data and while it is opposite of seeing things as a graph or a pie chart, handling the raw data transactions does give a different perspective on each of my investments and has led to some tentative decisions and hypotheses of what changes I will be considering for the future.

[bistrader]

I am new so I may be all mixed up.

I read these posts as I used the Wizard yesterday to add my Fidelity taxable and IRA accounts to the total portfolio in FM. I graph goes back for 2 years but I only have data for the recent period. It looks like for 2 months. What, if anything, am I doing wrong? Is there a way to open something with FM to find out what is actually in the files uses from a broker? For example, I tried to see if there was a way not to use the Wizard but rather to do some kind of importing function that allows one to see what Fidelity (and actually TDA as well) have in their data file. I read about Quicken but I do not have or use it.

Bert

[Mark]

Hi Bert,

To see your recorded transactions you can use the Data Register, or create an Investment Transaction report. The Data Register is a common dialog you'll want to become familiar with. We have a tutorial on how to use it here:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/tuto ... video.html

Which graph type are you looking at that goes back 2 years? You may have pricing data for 2 years, so if you plot the share price of an investment, you can see that back 2 years. However, if you only have 3 months of transaction history, any value based graphs will only be meaningful for the last 3 months. Any graph can be plotted for any time frame you want. So, if your first transaction is 3 months ago, and you plot a 2 year Portfolio Value or Value graph ending today, it will be 0 for the first part, and take a step up, 3 months ago through now.

[bistrader]

I only see 2 or maybe 3 months of Fidelity stuff in the portfolio and wanted to know if there was a way to see or read the data that FM SEES from Fidelity.

Let me be clear. I use the Wizard. The Wizard does not tell me what it sees so I have no idea if there is more than a few months of data that it gets from Fidelity or not. I wanted to SEE what the Wizard SEEs. I am guessing that it SEES only 2 or 3 months from Fidelity. Guessing.

Bert

[Mark]

Hi Bert,

With the wizard you can't see the actual transactions during the wizard operation. However, you can look at the recorded transaction immediately after using the wizard. This will show you what Fund Manager recorded from the data retrieved. If you want to see the actual data transmitted from your broker you can look at the log file.

To see the log file, turn on "Options / General Preferences... / Other / Create Log Files When Importing Transactions". The log files will then be located in your user's "AppData \ Roaming \ Fund Manager" folder. The AppData folder is hidden, so you have to display hidden files/folders to see it. In this folder will be several log files. The easiest format to read is the "xmldump.txt" file which is a formatted copy of the data directly received from the broker.

[lite1]

Bert ... I started the thread, but am a newbie to FM. Will try to share what I know.
Fidelity will only allow you to download the last 90 days of data, UNLESS you are attempting to download into AND using Quicken - this is based on info I got directly by talking to Fidelity.

I did NOT attempt to download first into Quicken, then export a QIF file from Quicken and then import that QIF file into FM. I did NOT want to try and learn more about Quicken and the brief test that I did do convinced me that this was probably not a foolproof and accurate approach.

Based on your post, I will assume that your Fidelity account had its first transaction say about Sept. 15, 2010. If you want all of your transactions in FM (rather than the modified approach I will describe 2nd which approximates the distributions rcvd) then my approach was and what I suggest is: (It is primarily a lot of manual entry with some cut and paste; I am doing this from memory so my recollection of Fidelity labels and web pages is probably somewhat off yet in the ballpark)
1) On Fidelity website on the main account page that would show the acct # for your IRA and for your taxable accts there is a drop down to the right of the acct #. Click on History.
From drop down on Date from the new web pg displayed click on 2010 3rd quarter. Click radio button ascending and click on display. Now click on download and label the .csv file appropriately.
2) On the History page repeat this process until you have downloaded all files except the 2012 3rd quarter.
3) Open blank Excel spreadsheet (or whatever spreadsheet prog you use). Use data import function and import the first .csv e.g. 2010 3rd quarter which would cover your earliest transactions from Sept. 2010. Continue to import your .csv files to build your transaction history in a spreadsheet,
4) Back at Fidelity created again the 2010 3rd quarter and display it ascending so that you see your earliest transaction in Sept. 2010.

5) Finally you are ready to work with the above raw data with FM, Use the Wizard as you had done to create a new Fidelity portfolio (in case you give up on the approach and simply want to use the original you had done that only has limited history in it). In FM for Setup method choose the last radio button labeled something like Manual. ON next screen enter only one Investment which is the Fidelity money market fund that you have them sweep into and out of for your redemptions and purchases. Approximate the starting cash amount for this investment, OR if you had funded your account at Fidelity by transferring money in then you know exactly the amount, and enter the date for this first transaction for the MM investment. When given the choice in Wizard choose this MM as your default cash acct.

6) Now the manual entry begins: In the new portfolio displayed in FM in the editor, ctrl + n will bring up new investment dialog, Use the Fidelity history web display page, and/or your spreadsheet to create your first investment e.g. 50 shares of XYZ . Use cut and paste wherever possible to save time and/or increase accuracy of data entry. Once you have entered all the data for that quarter, change the history displayed the next more recent quarter and repeat.

7) once you have entered all data upto in my example 2012 3rd quarter, you can stop. Now right click on the name of the Fidelity portfolio in the left pane of the editor and click retrieve transactions - regardless of the date range you put in there e.g. 2010 to 2012 the Fidelity "transaction server" will only give you the most recent 90 days.

You now need to do some kind of reconcile process with what you see in FM with what you see on the Positions view on the Fidelity website. The default cash acct is the one that in my exp. of doing this with 5 Fidelity portfolios is most likely to be off, and for me it was only off by far less than 1/2% of total cash value. What there were a few small discrepancies in share totals for some investments these were found fairly quickly by seeing that some dividend and re-invest transactions had been entered twice.

Notes: on above. You might find or realize in advance that you do not need the spreadsheet at all that you created from the .csv downloads so you can eliminate that set of steps entirely.

Variation on above - approximate the dividend and re-investments:
Probably 90% of my transactions were div. and re-investments of a core investment. Rather than enter each of these individually, I used the spreadsheet to get the total shares, and total cost for all of the re-invested dividends in a single Investment e.g. XYZ stock or XYZ mutual fund. I then used a pseudo purchase date for this composite transaction that was at about the mid-point of the date range during which these re-investments were happening. This method greatly reduces entry but obviously makes performance calculations somewhat less accurate - for me this was a fine trade off.

Additional note on Fidelity IRA: I think I made a separate post on this above. Fidelity is aware that there website data is inaccurate for mutual fund automatic dividend re-investments as they show these transactions as having zero cost basis rather than the accurate accounting method which is that the cost basis is identical to the cash value of the dividend rcvd. Call Fidelity and have them fix your account and insist on that as I did and they should correct it with a biz week. If you do NOT do this it becomes a real nuisance to reconcile your FM portfolio against what you see on Fidelity website.

All of the above can really be daunting and a nuisance, so please complain to Fidelity that the inability to download all of your transaction history as one single QIF file or one single OFX puts Fidelity far behind the brokerage competition in being a technology and customer friendly place. Fortunately after you do the above, as long as you ask FM to retrieve transactions from Fidelity at least once every 90 days you will not have to do this manual entry game again.

Hopefully this was clear enough for you to be able to follow the instructions. Sorry I could not do any screen captures to make it clearer. Good luck ...

[bistrader]

Lite1 - Thanks for the detail. I am working thru your reply a second time. I understand and thanks.

Mark - I went to Preferences and found out that the settings you referenced are in place already. I then went to Windows Explorer, to Tools, View and notes that hidden files and folders are to be shown. I went to Fund Manager folder. I see Autoback, etc., but no folder or log file. I was thinking that there would be a log file from the last Wizard or for all Wizards I ran. Hmmm.

[lite1]

Bistrader ... Please note: Mark is the FM expert so go with any of his suggestions. To my first post he did NOT suggest that I work with .csv file from Fidelity. My instructions suggest downloading all of your transaction history as .csv files in 90 day increments and then assembling these in a single worksheet in a prog like Excel. (I am quite used to doing that so it was quick and simple and no learning curve.) FM will do an import from a .csv file so you can check the FM manual with regard to that, which I just saw yesterday after writing my long post.

I am NOT certain it would be quicker or easier, but it is an option. If you are facile with Excel and can work quickly in Excel that might be a good approach:
1) Download .csv from Fidelity one quarter of history at a time; compile in Excel.
2) Use Excel to label columns per FM manual for the generic (.csv) import approach.
3) As needed, and I think it'd be needed - alter and/or add to the data row by row that you have in Excel to meet the needs of FM for import. Since there would only be a few patterns that you would need, I expect that by sorting things properly in Excel you could do large batches of Excel data of rows by cut and paste. But I really don't know how much work this would be. Since you would not be changing price or share numbers or dates, if this approach works for you it seems far less likely that you would create errors in data versus my method which is much more manual entry oriented.
4) Export Excel file as .csv
5) Import .csv into FM by the process in the FM manual.

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Seems simple!!! but the devil is in the details and since I have not used the above my description makes it seem real simple and efficient, but in reality it might be easy or might have its own set of gotchas.
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Again good luck, and post back here how you approached things and any tips that would be useful to others. I hope never to have to go thru my process again, but the great thing about FM is that this forum is an outstanding resource and makes all of us smarter and cuts our learning curve - especially due to Mark, but also to other FM forum people who take the time to share what they have learned especially on the nitty gritty of using FM with a particular brokerage.

[Mark]

Mark - I went to Preferences and found out that the settings you referenced are in place already. I then went to Windows Explorer, to Tools, View and notes that hidden files and folders are to be shown. I went to Fund Manager folder. I see Autoback, etc., but no folder or log file. I was thinking that there would be a log file from the last Wizard or for all Wizards I ran. Hmmm.

Hi bistrader,

The log files are not in your Fund Manager data folder, they are in your user's application data folder. Under Windows Vista or later, it would be here:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Fund Manager

Under XP and earlier it would be at:

C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data\Fund Manager