Transfer In/Out vs Merging

[Shmuel]

Hi,
I am moving all shares of asset A from broker X to broker Y, where I also hold shares of asset A. There seem to be at least two ways of handling this in Fund Manager (1. Edit / Investment Data / Transfer Between...; and 2. Merging Investments (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alv3-dbw_GU)). I would be grateful for any advice as to the advantages/disadvantages of each method. What will I do with the downloaded transaction?

A second scenario I am facing is moving all shares of asset B from broker A to broker Y, where I do not hold any shares of asset B. Would I handle this the same way as the first scenario?

Thanks for any guidance.

[Mark]

Hi Shmuel,

There is a 3rd way, which is simply to move the whole investment from the sub-portfolio of broker X to the sub-portfolio of broker A. This works whether or not you have this investment already in the broker A sub-portfolio.

An advantage of the "Transfer Between..." method is you have a record of the date the shares moved.

One case where you wouldn't want to transfer or merge 2 investments into 1 is when you have already sold some shares with a specific accounting method. For example, if you sold some shares using FIFO, but then transferred/merged shares that would change how that FIFO calculation was done.

Simply moving the whole investment is the simplest, but the drawbacks may be that you have 2 investments instead of 1, and you don't have the history in your old sub-portfolio. You can record a note in the investment to partially fix this.

Personally, I like to just move the investment in cases like this, and leave the investments separate when you already own shares. It is simpler, and clean, although you would end up with 2 investments of the same security. If you do have 2 investments, and are retrieving transactions, you could leave the CUSIP only in 1 of the investments, where you want to direct the incoming transactions. If it is a distribution, this can get messy, as you may have to split up the distribution into 2 parts. A downside of not transferring/merging into 1 investment...

[Shmuel]

Hi Mark,
Thanks very much for your detailed response. I very much appreciate your explanations and the advantages/disadvantages of the various methods.
Best Regards,
Shmuel