distributions

[oyz79]

Is it possible to designate certain portfolios to reinvest dividends and other portfolios to distribute dividends to cash? Ideally I'd like to be able to retrieve historical prices for all portfolios and have the dividend distributions handled correctly.

Also, I have a portfolio which retrieved dividends but did not reinvest them automatically. Is it possible to retroactively reinvest the dividends or do I need delete the investments and retrieve the dividends again to have them reinvested?

[Mark]

Hi oyz79,

Just to be clear, we're talking about retrieving dividends via the Yahoo (Historical) quote server, and not directly from a broker or mutual fund company with the transaction retrieve feature, right? If so, sorry, that is not an option to set on a per-portfolio basis. That is something we can consider adding though.

If you retrieved dividends as distributed and want to change to reinvested you would need to delete the retrieved dividends and re-retrieve with the option the way you want it. The reason for this is that Yahoo reports dividends on a per-share basis, and the dividend amount is calculated by FM based on the number of shares you own. Reinvesting changes the number of shares, so your later dividend amounts would be incorrect. You can use the Data Register to select all your dividends at once, and delete them.

[oyz79]

Thanks, I would like to see that feature added. I use Yahoo to retrieve the historical data.

[oyz79]

One other question - if I run a Portfolio / Investment Overlay graph > Price + Distributions, will the graph display dividends paid to a stock, even if they are not reinvested? My main concern is tracking the performance data.

[Mark]

Hi oyz79,

Yes, the distributions are included in all the "Price + Dist." based graphs, whether they are reinvested or distributed.