From: chapman@centerline.com (Scott Chapman, (Scott Chapman x233))
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps
Subject: Re: Quicken vs Managing Your Money
Date: 21 Jan 1993 15:01:46 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software
Distribution: world
Reply-To: chapman@centerline.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: divine.centerline.com

In article 190193185030@shoemac.apple.com, shoemake@apple.com (Mike Shoemaker) writes:
>
>I agree. I really get irked in its handling of mutual fund
>reinvestment. It is nearly impossible to reconcile what I think's in my
>401(k) (three Fidelity mutual funds) against the quarterly statement I
>receive from Fidelity. MYM won't "sum up" the number of shares of a
>stock/mutual fund with the same symbol and simply show how many shares I
>own.
Sure it will. I have a mutual fund which I invest in, and I get information
about how many shares I bought and what the price/share was. I simply enter
this information in and I can generate a report showing me what the current
value of my shares are and how many shares I own.

>
>When buying mutual funds, it asks me the # of shares and price/share. I buy
>mutual funds by dollar amount not units of shares. So I have to use a
>calculator to figure out # of shares based on the dollar amount and price
>per share.
You are mistaken here, most (if not all) mutual funds *are* sold by shares.
This is why you can look up the share values in your favorite newspaper's
business section. However, I do have a problem with my reports that come
from fidelity (which are my 401ks). I do not see information about how many
shares I bought or what the price was. This is either fidelity's fault of
the fault of the company I work for (who I think was the one who wrote these
reports).

At any rate, you must be able to enter this information in to be able to
correctly track your investment. A dollar amount just wont do it because the
value of the fund is always changing.

>
>It would be nice if the 'Buy Securities' window would seed the price/share
>field from MYM's internal database of current price that I've already
>entered in another window.
Agreed, have you reported it as a bug? The other thing I noticed is that if
I enter in a new value for the security through the 'Buy Securities' window,
it does not update the current value into the 'Securities' window. Bummer,
but easy enough to work around.

>
>When you enter in a reinvested dividend or capital gain, and then use the
>analyze portfolio window to show "% return", it doesn't understand that
>there was a reinvestment. I.E. on January 1st, buy 1000 shares at $1/share.
>On January 31st, the fund has gone up in value to $1.50 per share, and
>a dividend of $.50/share is declared (So the price per share goes back to
>$1/share. MYM will show two entries in your portfolio:
>One for the inital 1000 shares, and one for the $500 reinvested
>dividend. For the 1st entry, it shows a current
>value of $1000 and a "% return" of zero. For the 2nd entry it
>shows a value of $500 and a "% return" of zero. It missed the fact that
>I actually made 50% on my money, not zero!
Eh? You dividend is paid out at the funds NEW value, not the value before
dividends were paid out. You dividend is a payout to you by your fund so that
they can lower their share cost. When you re-invest it what you end up with is
more shares that are worth less (per share). You total amount in the fund will
not change (at that point).

You did not make 50% on your money (the 1000 shares @ $1.50). They gave you
$500 (500 shares @ $1.00) to compensate for their fund lowering their fund
price per share ($.50 per share).

>
>Like one of the other posters to this discussion, I use Excel
>to track mutual funds rather than use MYM's ability.
For some of my mutual fund work I too use excel, but when I have the right information
available, MYM is great.

>
>---
>Mike Shoemaker
>Apple Computer, Inc.



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                                  |
                    Scott Chapman | chapman@centerline.com
              CenterLine Software | (617) 498-3230
                   10 Fawcett St. | (617) 868-6655 (FAX)
              Cambridge, MA 02138 | (Centerline was formerly Saber Software)
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