Re: creating portfolio

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In Reply to: creating portfolio posted by John Swanson on January 04, 2006 at 13:37:03:

: I am a registered FM 6 owner and I am trying out the v. 7. However, I just can’t seem to understand the process of creating the new portfolios using existing investments. I want to give you an example. I have a Roth IRA account for my wife. Recently she had it all in a Fidelity money market account. Recently she sold that position and purchased shares in Fidelity Mid Cap Growth.

: I already had a FM investment file for “Mike's Roth IRA Fidelity Cash Reserves.dat.” I also had a file for the Fidelity “Core” account. When I tried to set up a new portfolio for this I was confused. When I downloaded the transactions from Fidelity FM created a new file for the Mid Cap Growth Account. However, it didn’t seem to take it from the Core account. I would like to figure this out, but I can live with that issue. However, when it downloaded the Cash Reserves data it created a new file. How can I get it to put the download data into the file that already exists? Or should I try to move the existing data into the new file somehow? Maybe this wouldn’t be such a big deal but I have this situation for each person in my family.

Hi John,

When FM retrieves transactions for a given sub-portfolio, it looks in that sub-portfolio for an investment with a matching CUSIP. If the CUSIP is empty, it looks based on a matching Symbol. If it finds an existing investment that matches, then the transaction is added to that existing investment. If no matching investment could be found, it will create a new investment for you. So, in order to get your retrieved transactions to go into your already existing investments, make sure to set the CUSIP and/or symbol property, and make sure that investment is located in that sub-portfolio. The "Portfolio Editor" is a good tool to use to help here.

Here is a related tip: If you're not sure of the CUSIP, you can do a retrieve, and let it create new investments. Then, look in these new investments, and see what the CUSIP is. You can just close your portfolio without saving, and then go back in and edit the CUSIP on your already existing investments before re-retrieving.

In FM7 every sub-portfolio can now have its own default cash account. There isn't just one, like there used to be in v6. When you retrieve transactions, there is an option on the preview screen as to whether or not you want to record a corresponding entry in the default cash account for all your transactions. To assign a default cash account, select the "Properties..." of any sub-portfolio. It is easiest to do this from within the Portfolio Editor.

You may also want to review this tutorial on converting from multiple old portfolios into a single new FM7 portfolio using the Portfolio Editor:

http://www.fundmanagersoftware.com/tutor_ports.html

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

• Converting old portfolios tutorial

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