Re: Definition of "balk"

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In Reply to: Re: Definition of "balk" posted by Mike Jordana on September 24, 2005 at 21:01:50:

: Hi Mark!

: You said, “This is indeed a weakness of Fund Manager, that you can't really work with your portfolios/investments until you have at least one open investment. That one investment can be in any sub-portfolio, but if you have no open investments in any sub-portfolio, you'll only get the File/Help menu items. This is an area we plan to make more user friendly in a future version.”

: So please help me understand something. I alluded in an earlier email that I’m not afraid to go 100% to cash when the market turns. I’m sort of a short-term market timer that way. I’m not much into the buy-and-hold philosophy. When the dark clouds loom, I sell everything. And I do mean everything.

: So are you telling me that if I sell all my stocks, and my all portfolios and sub-portfolios have only their default cash accounts, that I’m going to be unable to work with the MM4 file? Wow! That’s a big “uh-oh” for me. Or does the default cash account constitute a bonafide investment for the purposes of FM? If so, is there a way to define the default cash account within (or outside of) the New Portfolio Wizard, with some funds in it, so FM will honor my portfolio’s existence?

: -Mike.

Hi Mike,

No, this will not be a problem. As long as you have 1 investment "open" you can do anything in your portfolio. By "open" I mean the investment file is open, not that you have an open position. It can be any investment, even a cash investment, or an investment that you have sold off. You don't have to own any shares or anything. Usually this is not a problem, it really only creates confusion when users are first getting started (which is not good of course...) and they don't have any investment files created yet.

To assign the default cash account use the Portfolio Editor (View / Portfolio Editor...). Right mouse click on any sub-portfolio and choose "Properties...". Here you can assign the default cash account for that sub-portfolio. Each sub-portfolio can have its own default cash account.

As an aside, you can create investments in a variety of ways. One of them is when you use the New Portfolio Setup Wizard. You can also have FM create them automatically when you do an import of transactions. The third way is to create them manually using the "File / New Investment..." menu command.

Thanks,
Mark
--
Mark Beiley
Fund Manager, portfolio management software for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/00/XP/2003

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