Investments Price History Chart

First, let me say since I have complained about some things in Money
lately that I have found something they really did well. I wasn't
really sure where my 401K contributions were going when I withheld them
in my Paycheck setup. I finally got around to setting up my 401K
account correctly and thanks to the umpfaq, I got my employer
contributions setup correctly. The investment side of things is very
nice. Easy to use and great to track my retirement account. One tip I
have discovered. My plan is through Vanguard and their online
transaction history only shows 3 decimal places for the # of shares
purchased. I was running into a problem when I entered their # of
shares and the share price, it would be a few cents off on the amount.
Since Money won't let you enter it incorrectly, I found that you can go
out of order in Money and enter the share price and the amount and it
will calculate the # of shares for you. Probably obvious to some, but
it took me a few minutes.

Now for my question...

I like the Price History chart that shows the price history for your
investment. Does anyone know of a way to data points to this chart that
shows when you purchased shares? All of the data needed is in Money, I
just can't find a way to do it. I could download it all to Excel, but
it seems like this would be something in Money.

Dick
Tue Feb 22 09:53:04 CST 2005

I don't know how to answer your question on the price history charts, but I
do have a suggestion on your data entry technique.

By entering the price and total amount and letting Money calculate the
shares, you will have a growing error in share balance since, as you note,
the fund company rounds shares to three decimal places and Money will not be
doing the same. The better technique is to enter the number of shares and
the total amount and let Money calculate the price. A price calculated to
four or five or more digits in Money won't propagate a problem. A number of
shares done the same way will.

"Jeff Martin" <no_jeffwmartin@gmail_spam> wrote in message
news:eNQuLeOGFHA.560@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
> My plan is through Vanguard and their online
> transaction history only shows 3 decimal places for the # of shares
> purchased. I was running into a problem when I entered their # of
> shares and the share price, it would be a few cents off on the amount.
> Since Money won't let you enter it incorrectly, I found that you can go
> out of order in Money and enter the share price and the amount and it
> will calculate the # of shares for you. Probably obvious to some, but
> it took me a few minutes.

Jeff
Tue Feb 22 09:59:47 CST 2005

That makes sense. Thanks for the heads up.
Dick Watson wrote:
> I don't know how to answer your question on the price history charts, but I
> do have a suggestion on your data entry technique.
>
> By entering the price and total amount and letting Money calculate the
> shares, you will have a growing error in share balance since, as you note,
> the fund company rounds shares to three decimal places and Money will not be
> doing the same. The better technique is to enter the number of shares and
> the total amount and let Money calculate the price. A price calculated to
> four or five or more digits in Money won't propagate a problem. A number of
> shares done the same way will.
>
> "Jeff Martin" <no_jeffwmartin@gmail_spam> wrote in message
> news:eNQuLeOGFHA.560@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
>
>> My plan is through Vanguard and their online
>>transaction history only shows 3 decimal places for the # of shares
>>purchased. I was running into a problem when I entered their # of
>>shares and the share price, it would be a few cents off on the amount.
>>Since Money won't let you enter it incorrectly, I found that you can go
>>out of order in Money and enter the share price and the amount and it
>>will calculate the # of shares for you. Probably obvious to some, but
>>it took me a few minutes.
>
>
>

via_newsgroup
Tue Feb 22 11:11:40 CST 2005

In microsoft.public.money, Jeff Martin wrote:

> One tip I
>have discovered. My plan is through Vanguard and their online
>transaction history only shows 3 decimal places for the # of shares
>purchased. I was running into a problem when I entered their # of
>shares and the share price, it would be a few cents off on the amount.
>Since Money won't let you enter it incorrectly, I found that you can go
>out of order in Money and enter the share price and the amount and it
>will calculate the # of shares for you.

On the transaction entry thing, you will be better off by letting
Money compute the price and you enter the Quantity and Total. The
reason is that you really are only buying units of 0.001 shares for
a specific price. The price per share is the unimportant one.

A
Tue Feb 22 13:59:23 CST 2005

Jeff,

I sync automatically with Vanguard each day. When it downloads
information when I have pruchases or revestments, I believe it will
just "add shares". I ignore the downloaded information and go to the
web and grab the data and properly classify it as Buy or Reinvest.

Why? There is an issue with the rounding of the shares/units.
Transactions downloaded are carried to 5 decimal points (0.12345) where
as the website (and their quarterly statements) are rounded to 3
decimals ( 0.123). Vanguard follows "normal" rounding and will take the
0.12345 and round it down to 0.123.

Also, if you do the compare balances function within Money it is the
same issue - you show 0.123 and Vanguard shows 0.12345 - Money asks if
you want to add 0.00045. I ignore this also.

This is not limited to Money, it also occurs in Quicken. It is not a
Money or Quicken bug but Vanguard being inconsistent in reporting.