Fidelity Investment Margin Retrieve

[mbrentshelton]

Hello -

I am new to FM and am evaluating the software. I looked through help and this forum regard margin interest/balance, but I believe I am still missing a key concept (or two).

My question is how do I import from Quicken and, then, download margin expense from Fidelity into FM?

I believe that I have successfully set up a Sub-Portfolio and imported my Quicken QIF information, except for the margin expense. I have a "Cash" account into which my imported Quicken file placed the cash transactions associated with stock purchases and sales as shown in the Data Register, except for the Margin Expense items. While not critical, it would be good to have the time course of margin expense in the data record.

What I do believe is important is to be able to have the FM records reconciled with Fidelity. When I use the "Reconcile Wizard" from within the Portfolio Editor, the report notes the difference between the current cash balance and a zero balance (because I have a margin balance I have a zero cash balance), not the current margin balance in my Fidelity.

Again, I am new to FM, but I might have expected that the reconcile balance would have been against the margin balance or I might have had a two reconcile balances (one for cash balance and one for the margin balance). So, I am thinking that I do not have FM set up to recognize the Margin balance from Fidelity (or record the margin expenses when imported from Quicken).

I trust that I have simply erred in some set-up - please feel free to point me to the help section or forum dialog on how I can connect the cash account to the Fidelity margin balance for future margin expense transaction downloads and account reconciliation for cash. (If it is pretty straightforward to also have the margin expense events from the Quicken import pulled in as well, I would welcome that information.)

Your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,

- Brent

Ideally, I would want to have future downloads

[Mark]

Hi Brent,

There is no 1 specific way to track margin expense. It is usually simplest to just record it in your default cash account, but you could put it in a separate investment too. It depends on how your broker reports it in their OFX feed.

Since these transactions did not come in your QIF import, I would suggest looking at your QIF file in a text editor, and see if you see them in the file?

For compatibility with reconciling with your broker, you may want to set up your investments, so that you can reconcile/retrieve going forward. When reconciling and retrieving from your broker, transactions/positions are matched by CUSIP. So, if your broker is reporting cash and margin separately, you can create 2 separate investments, each with the appropriate CUSIP.