Unwanted Price Updates

[mecrews]

Hello,

Not sure what's going on -- but I've got several bond investments that are updating prices and I have the internet retrieval radio button unchecked.

Furthermore I have some bond investments that have the internet retrieval radio button checked but they aren't being multiplied by 10 which I also have set in the internet retrieval tab in the properties section.

I can't remember having this problem in the past -- any help?

Thanks!

[Mark]

Hi mecrews,

Maybe the prices are getting updated in some other way, like when you import transactions. Are you importing transactions from an institutional interface, or retrieve transactions? Both of those methods can update prices. If you look at the price of the investment in question, and then just do an "Edit / Internet Retrieve / Prices", does the price change or get updated incorrectly?

The options under the "Internet Retrieve" tab in the "Investment Properties..." dialog only affect the internet price retrieve, they don't apply to price updates done with a transaction import/retrieve.

[mecrews]

Mark,

That's a good catch. I use Scottrade to daily update client transaction history. I didn't realize that pricing is pulled from those files.

Is there any way to keep this from happening?

Thanks,

Matthew

[Mark]

Hi Matthew,

There is a registry only option that you can use to turn off the importing of prices during a transaction import. If you use "regedit" to go here:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Beiley Software\Fund Manager\CurrentVersion\miscprefs

and create a new "string" value named:

skipTpriceimport

and set it to a value of "1", prices won't be imported when you import transactions. This means none of your prices from Scottrade are going to import. Is there some reason you don't like the pricing coming from Scottrade? Usually it works best to leave on this option of updating the prices.

[mecrews]

Mark,

Maybe I'm particular but I really like to work with $1,000 par value bonds so I need to multiple the price by 10. That works well with the price import but the transaction import is messing it up. I update prices daily anyway and didn't realize that I was getting pricing from the Scottrade file.

Also I ended up using a price of $1 for a GNMA investment for a new client and it keeps importing the $1XX price. So I don't want any prices imported for that particular investment so that it stays at $1.

If I make the regedit edits and skipTpriceimport then that would work. I guess my problem then is that I would prefer Scottrade's pricing since that's what I'm using to reconcile.

As it stands I have to go in and manually change the price for 20 bonds -- not really optimal.

Matthew

[Mark]

Hi Matthew,

Thanks for the explanation. That does make it more difficult.

[mecrews]

Mark,

Here's another reason Scottrade pricing is messing me up. First I'll admit that I seem to not be using the software to its full potential so maybe I've got to just buck up and learn more about how to fully utilize FM.

Saying that -- I built several model portfolios to reflect securities and %'s for client portfolios that will track model portfolios. Those %'s are fixed and I want the model portfolio to be static. Investment A remains at X% at all time. I thought I would uncheck the price update feature and all would be good. Now I'm aware that the Scottrade file is also updating those securities and altering my X%. Darn.

So this is another reason to get into the regedit and make the change!

Thanks,

Matthew

PS On model portfolios I tfx'd shares into based on a theoretical account value of $100,000 so that I would get the right %.

[Mark]

Hi Matthew,

Scottrade updates transactions/prices based off the CUSIP property. If you have some special cases where you don't want the investments updated, you could change the CUSIP to something different, so it won't match when you import transactions/prices. You probably don't want to do this in real accounts, as it will affect reconciliation and transaction imports, but for this model portfolio case, where you don't want the prices updated, and there are no transactions that you're importing, this technique would work.