Investments with a $1 share price updated incorrectly

[TudorP]

When I run a "Retrieve Selected Historical Prices" for my master porfolio, it sometimes updates the price on investments with a $1 share price to a value of $8.5. This then, obviously, incorrectly inflates the investment value. I have to go in and manually find and delete the incorrect share price update. This has never happened before in the years I have used Fund Manager.

How can I fix / prevent this from happening?

Thank you!
Tudor

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

It may be that whatever symbol you've assigned to these investments is now a valid symbol. The way to fix this is to go into "Investment Properties... / Internet Retrieve", and turn off "Retrieve Price" for these investments, so they aren't retrieved/updated.

[TudorP]

Thanks Mark, but that's not it. I have "Retrieve Price" unchecked in all of the funds that do get their price updated incorrectly.

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

Are you sure it's happening when you retrieve prices? If you retrieve prices, and then go look in the price retrieve log (Help / Logs / Price Retrieve...), does it show it updated the symbol in question?

[TudorP]

Hey Mark - Yes, after I Retrieve Prices, if I double click on the investment and navigate to the 'Prices' data type, I see entries for recent dates with the incorrect 'Close' value. It happens mostly to my investments with a $1 share price. Like I said, I've used FM for many years, and this is the first time this is systematically happening.

Tudor

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

Can you look in the Price Retrieve log after a retrieve and see if this symbol for these investments is being updated? This is different than the Data Register, and will hopefully shed some light on the situation. If you'd like me to take a look, please email me your price log, and a sample ticker symbol with this problem.

[TudorP]

Hey Mark - Of course it did it 3 days in a row and today it's not incorrectly updating. I'll keep monitoring it this week and if it happens again, I'll provide the log file!

Appreciate the prompt response.

Thanks,
Tudor

[TudorP]

Ok Mark - It did it again. I Retrieved Prices for my master porfolio. No error. I then Retrieved Transactions for a number of sub-portfolios and I now have dozens of funds that had a price of $1 updated to $8.53 again! It seems like this is related to Retrieve Transactions, but this is really weird, because funds *outside* of the portfolios I updated got their share price updated to $8.53.

I'm going to email you the intlog.

Really appreciate any insight here. This is so frustrating and takes so long to fix.

Thanks,
Tudor

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

Did you check the prices between retrieving prices and retrieving transactions? Did the prices only update after retrieving transactions? I don't see any 8.53 price in your price retrieve log. If you look at one of these incorrectly updated investments that you want to stay at $1, what do you have for "Investment Properties... / Internet Retrieve / Update Price When Retrieving Transactions"?

Also, if you want to exit without saving anything, this is a way you can avoid having to fix everything. See the "Options / Save on Exit" commands, turn those off, exit, and say "No" when prompted to save. Of course, you'll lose any changes you've made since your last save, but maybe this is what you want in this case. You can then just do the price retrieve and transaction retrieve again, after turning off the above option on each of your investments where you don't want it.

[TudorP]

Hey Mark - Ok, thanks to your questions I've isolated the issue - though I don't know how to solve it. When I Retrieve Transactions on my Fidelity 401k sub-portfolio, this is the trigger for FM to update Prices to $8.5 across multiple investments across multiple accounts. It does not happen when I Retrieve Transactions for any other portfolio.

Thanks for the tip on disabling auto-save... this has been a huge time saver and has allowed me to identify the trigger issue.

Thoughts on next steps?

Thanks,
Tudor

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

Turn off "Investment Properties... / Internet Retrieve / Update Price When Retrieving Transactions" on these investments.

[TudorP]

Ok. That solved the problem. Seems like a bug that needs to be addressed in the software, right? It was affecting lots of different investments.

Thanks,
Tudor

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

I don't think it is a bug. What would you like to see changed? When you retrieve transactions for any given sub-portfolio, all matching investments (by CUSIP) will have their price updated with the price quoted by the broker if that option is on. It doesn't restrict to only updating in that sub-portfolio. It sounds like your cash investments had a CUSIP value that was being reported with that $8 price by the broker, thus they were getting updated.

[TudorP]

Hi Mark - It did it again. I'm realizing that it's updating the share price for every investment that has a blank CUSIP. What is weird is that I have used FM for years and never had this problem. So, is the problem that I have investments with blank CUSIPs? And how would CUSIPs on existing investments been suddenly made blanks?

Thanks,
Tudor

[Mark]

Hi Tudor,

That is odd. Maybe your broker is somehow reporting a price on a blank CUSIP. Please retrieve transactions for the account in question, and then look at the log file under "Help / Logs / Transaction Retrieve (Parsed)...". It is a text file. You should see a section starting with:

SECLIST

and below this a group of lines, one for each security/fund, like this:

Code: Select all

- SECINFO
   - SECID
      - UNIQUEID (921938205)
      - UNIQUEIDTYPE (CUSIP)
   - SECNAME (VANGUARD WELLESLEY INCOME ADMIRAL CL)
   - TICKER (VWIAX)
   - UNITPRICE (59.02)


Does one of these have an empty "UNIQUEID"? If you're not sure about this, you can email me your log file, and I'll take a look.