Question About New Feature in 2016.14.1.100.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

I just downloaded the newest version of FM. I have a question about one of the items in the revision history:

Updated new advanced option that updates prices when retrieving transactions by market value / units. Considers the reported unit price and scales to get price to correct order of magnitude. Improved with issues related to rounding of price.

If I'm reading this correctly, does it mean that prices will now be updated automatically when a transaction retrieve is done? In other words, we no longer have to do a Price History retrieve as well as a Transaction Retrieve?

[Mark]

Hi avaitor,

Whenever you retrieve transactions, Fund Manager also updates pricing as provided by your broker. It has always done this, this isn't the new part. The new part is in how it updates the price. It still works the same by default, in that it updates the price, using the "PRICE" supplied by your broker. There is a new advanced option introduced in the 2016 version that allows you to update the price using the MARKET VALUE and SHARES to determine the price, instead of the actual PRICE. This isn't the default, and is only needed in cases where you're tracking things like TIPS that have an additional price factor not included in the PRICE. In the 2016.14.1 version we improved the algorithm here, but the feature was introduced in 2016.14.0. It is off by default. To see this option, click on "Advanced Options..." in the transaction retrieve dialog, and notice the choice for "Update Closing Prices".

[aviator]

Thanks, Mark.

Just to be clear, when you say that Fund Manager has always updated prices based on what is provided by my broker, is that irrespective of whether a security has a transaction?

I update FM once a week, on Saturday mornings. My routine has always to do a Price History retrieval first, immediately followed by a Transaction Retrieve. If I'm understanding you correctly, I've only needed to do a Transaction Retrieve since prices will be automatically updated. True?

Regarding the new feature allowing price updates based on MARKET VALUE and SHARES, this is extremely helpful. I own a few individual municipal bonds and for some reason my broker only downloads prices to two positions to the right of the decimal point (although their systems store the prices with greater precision). If one were to multiply their price times shares, the market value is always off due to the imprecision of the price. Going forward, I expect this new feature to solve this problem. THANKS!

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

The updated prices from a transaction retrieve happen whether you had a transaction or not. The broker reports a recent price for all your securities. The date of the price can be delayed, it depends on the broker. If you're retrieving Saturday morning, you'll likely get Friday's closing price, but you will only get that 1 day, you won't get Mon-Thu pricing. If you want that, you'd still need to retrieve historical prices (or retrieve transactions daily).