Quicken 7 Investments Alert

Steve Becker <[email protected]> writes:

While testing Quicken 7 for an upcoming review, I found some anomalous behavior in the Investment Module that Quicken 7 users should be aware of. In the Portfolio Window, the Return On Investment (ROI) performance calculation is based on the adjusted basis of your investment (for example, your initial investment plus any reinvestments), not the actual amount initially invested. This is likely to reduce the reported ROI for the security. When running the Investment Report for the ROI, however, Quicken bases the calculation on the more standard method of treating all reinvested income from the security as a return on the initial, unadjusted investment.

This is a critical point because if you base an investment decision on the performance reported in the Portfolio Window, you might mistakenly conclude your investment is under-performing a security whose performance is reported from some other source. This is particularly true for mutual funds, which generally report performance based on a dollar amount initially invested at the beginning of the reporting period.

In addition, some other information presented in the Portfolio Window is affected by closed positions, potentially creating confusion when trying to interpret this data. I have discussed these issues with Intuit and expect an update to Quicken 7 will address these issues.