FM doesn't like investment-less portfolios?

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I don't get this Fund Manager. I'm trying to set up a hierarchy of portfolios to replicate my real-life situation, but unless I put some investments in every portfolio, FM refuses to recognize the portfolio. Here's what I'm trying to set up:

1 Master Level (just a "holder" for subsequent sub-portfolios, NO INVESTMENTS)
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2 „¥„Ÿ My personal portfolio (has investments)
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3 „¥„Ÿ Taxable portfolio - client 1 (has investments)
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4 „¥„Ÿ Taxable portfolio - client 2 (has investments)
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5 „¤„Ÿ Portfolio "holder" client 3 (NO INVESTMENTS)
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6 „¥„Ÿ Tax-deferred portfolio - client 3 (has investments)
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7 „¤„Ÿ Taxable portfolio acct - client 3 (has investments)

Portfolios on lines 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7 correspond to actual brokerage accounts, while the portfolios on lines 1 and 5 are just there for grouping purposes.
Anyway, when I do a "top-down" implementation of this schema, FM balks at the "holder" portfolios (lines 1 and 5 above). I must be unclear on the concept, maybe FM prefers a "bottoms-up" implementation... but in any case, FM seems to be counterintuitive. As far as my own personal intuition, anyway. Help, anyone?

Incidentally, I'm not averse about going into cash at a moment's notice on these portfolios, so there WILL be times when these portfolios will have NO associated investments whatsoever, other than a default cash account. I'm wondering if that's a future time bomb waiting for me as well...

Another issue for me is that oftentimes, I may have the same investment in more than 1 portfolio. If I bought IBM for 3 of the above portfolios, does that mean I will have 3 separate IBM.dat files, each with the same prices but transactions unique to the specific portfolio it's linked to? Wouldn't seem like good relational database design.

Maybe FM Personal is not the right version for my purposes, but as I understand it, Professional and Advisor versions are based on the same underlying hierarchical design, only with more bells and whistles added on. The clients I have are all family members, and this is just a hobby for me, so I really can't justify going to Professional or Advisor.

I don't know, I'm just concerned FM will be a steep learning curve for me. It seems pretty powerful, but I've run into some brick walls already, and I just downloaded the program yesterday afternoon.

Want another example? Okay, I went through the tutorial. Then, after I retrieved historical prices on the sample portfolio (only from 09/01/05 to 09/15/05), I decided half a month wasn't enough, and I wanted to go back further and retrieve more history for the same portfolio. Well, try as I might, I couldn't find how I could go back and do that. I could only retrieve current prices from that point on. That's gotta be a bummer.

Anyway, I'm rambling now...

Replies:

• Re: FM doesn't like investment-less portfolios? Mark 16:00:00 09/22/05 (4)
  • Definition of "balk" Mike Jordana 03:49:57 09/24/05 (3)
    • Re: Definition of "balk" Mark 10:36:42 09/24/05 (2)
      • Re: Definition of "balk" Mike Jordana 21:01:50 09/24/05 (1)
        • Re: Definition of "balk" Mark 00:01:59 09/25/05 (0)
• Re: FM doesn't like investment-less portfolios? Mike Jordana 18:16:27 09/16/05 (2)
  • Re: FM doesn't like investment-less portfolios? Mike Jordana 18:19:45 09/16/05 (1)
    • Re: FM doesn't like investment-less portfolios? Faith 23:32:01 09/16/05 (0)