Asset Type and Ivestment Goal.

[aviator]

I'm a newbie to Fund Manager and I have a question about Asset Type and Investment Goals:

Is there a way to change *all* securities in a portfolio to certain Asset Type (or, better yet, have this information downloaded directly from the Internet)?

Same applies to Investment Goal. I've imported some 1200+ securities and all are labeled as High Risk. Obviously these are way too many to do by hand, and I'm looking for a better way.

Thanks in advance for the help.

[Mark]

Hello aviator,

There is no command that changes all of the investments at once, and this information cannot be retrieved automatically. There are 3 items that may help here though:

1) You can change this information for all investments with the same symbol at once. Use either "Investment Properties... / Asset Type / Apply To All Investments With Matching Symbol" or if you're using the Advisor version using "Edit / Symbol List..." to apply changes to all investments with the same symbol. If all 1200+ of your investments are comprised of a smaller number of symbols this would help. On the other hand if they are a unique set of 1200+ symbols, this won't do much good...

2) If you have the asset type/investment goal information in some electronic format you can import it. See "File / Import / Other / Asset Type or Investment Goal". Press the "Help..." button here for an explanation of the file format. You can also export from FM to see an example of the file format. Basically, it is one line per symbol, with the allocations on the same line. It is a comma separated file (CSV).

3) If you imported using the generic transaction format you can add asset type or investment goal into your importing data. See the ASSET or GOAL import keys in the online help.

If you have any suggestions for where this information can be automatically retrieved please let us know.

[aviator]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your prompt reply. It's appreciated. Please see my comments below.

1) You can change this information for all investments with the same symbol at once. Use either "Investment Properties... / Asset Type / Apply To All Investments With Matching Symbol" or if you're using the Advisor version using "Edit / Symbol List..." to apply changes to all investments with the same symbol. If all 1200+ of your investments are comprised of a smaller number of symbols this would help. On the other hand if they are a unique set of 1200+ symbols, this won't do much good...

My 1200+ securities are actually doubled, about 600 are mine and 600 are my wife's. But that's still a lot to research and enter by hand. Further, one of our accounts is "actively managed" and has a lot of turnover each year, meaning that this would be an on-going issue even after the initial 600 are entered.

2) If you have the asset type/investment goal information in some electronic format you can import it.

Unfortunately, I don't. I'm an ex MS Money user who switched to Quicken (but Quicken can't handle the volume of transactions), which is where all my data currently exists. Quicken allows exporting for transactions, among other things, but not asset type/investment goal.

3) If you imported using the generic transaction format you can add asset type or investment goal into your importing data. See the ASSET or GOAL import keys in the online help.

Unfortunately, I imported using QFX format and it did not bring this information over.

If you have any suggestions for where this information can be automatically retrieved please let us know.

In Quicken, when a security is setup I have the opportunity to download price history and asset classes. Once the download complete, I can override either although I seldom do. I'm not sure where Intuit gets their data, but it does match what my investment bank uses.

[Mark]

Hi aviator,

I believe adding the ability to retrieve asset/goal information would be a popular improvement. We'll plan to look into this for the next major update.

In the mean time the best work-around I can suggest (given your large number of unique symbols) is to see if you can find this information available electronically somehow, and then import it using the "File / Import / Other / Asset Type or Investment Goal". Press the "Help" button here to get a description of the required format. Is is a pretty simple CSV file. I haven't really looked, but I imagine there may be some source where you can download this information, and then massage the download into Fund Manager's CSV format in order to import it.