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Phantom securities downloaded

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wuhl756

03 Feb, 2023 01:03 PM

Occasionally while downloading from several investment accounts I will get a pop-up asking me if a security is already on a list of securities that I already own. I select "None of these" or "None of the above." This is not unusual, as some of these accounts are managed by our advisor and sometimes he adds a stock without my knowing.

But on a few occasions, I have then checked to see where the "new" security is and it is not in any account and I am not shown as owning any shares. It is under Tools --> Securities with a price and the date it was added, but it is nowhere else to be found. I can't determine (or didn't notice) which account was being downloaded when the pop-up alerted me to the new security. My downloads are a mix of OFX and MD+, but this sometimes happened before I upgraded to MD+.

Today the download added two stocks, Weed Growth Fund (WEDG) and Global UAV Technologies (UAV.CN), the latter of which was also downloaded and added last November (so it now appears twice in my securities list). When I saw that WEDG is a cannabis-related investment, I wondered if this was some sort of spam or phishing event, but that seems very unlikely. UAV.CN is a Canadian penny stock.

Does anyone know why a "new" but phantom security would be added during a download, or if this issue has been addressed elsewhere?

1. 1 Posted by derekkent23 on 04 Feb, 2023 08:59 AM

   

   I am not support staff, just a user.
   Hi wuhl756

   May be this could be part of your issue.
   Some Financial Institutions in there downloads, when the same Security exists in more than one Investment Account, indicate to which account the data should be routed by adding an extra identifier. These identifiers are in addition to the Ticker and are not normally visible to the user. They can’t be found for example in the Security History window for a Security under TOOLS – SECURITIES. To handle this situation Moneydance automatically creates a Duplicate Security under TOOLS – SECURITIES which contains this hidden identifier.

   This discussion goes into the issue further and relates how the Toolbox extension can confirm this.

   https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/discussions/problems/71783-bug-n...

   Toolbox has been updated since Stuart’s post in that discussion. The current Toolbox build includes all the updates mentioned in the discussion.

   Take a look at Menu: Online Banking Tools - View your Security’s hidden CUSIP settings (The link between Banks’s Securities & MD Securities.

   Also you can explore tick Update Mode - Reset/Fix/Edit/Add CUSIP Banking Link, but first do a FILE – EXPORT BACKUP.

   If you think this could be the issue then Stuart may be able to help further.

   Hope this helps.

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2. 2 Posted by wuhl756 on 04 Feb, 2023 10:29 PM

   

   Hi derekkent23,

   I ran the View Security's hidden CUSIP settings and it did not reveal any duplicate CUSIPs. I then ran Reset/Fix/Edit/Add CUSIP Banking Link for the two securities that were phantoms, and it deleted them. I then tried running Merge 'duplicate' securities but I got an error message that cross-linked or orphaned security txns detected, run Fix: Non-hierarchical Security Account txns & detect Orphans. I did this and it warned me that 40 orphans had been detected. I chickened out because it looked like it was going to go back and change transactions. However, in reviewing the list of 40 orphans, I did not see any transaction that could have caused any of the phantom securities to have been mistakenly entered as duplicates.

   I will scan through my list of securities to ferret out any that were never owned to see if there are many other phantoms that were downloaded. Meanwhile, I will have to try to watch for the next time this happens.

   Thanks for your help.

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3. 3 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 05 Feb, 2023 10:53 AM

   

   the orphans are an issue you need to fix. They may not be related to your issue, but never-the-less.

   Can you go to a couple of them, right click, show transaction details and post the output here..

   If you like, email the toolbox output for the phantoms to me:
   ...

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4. 4 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 05 Feb, 2023 10:58 AM

   

   I.e. run:
   "FIX: Non-Hierarchical Security Acct Txns (& detect Orphans) (fix_non-hierarchical_security_account_txns.py)", at the popup, save the output, upload here or email to me..

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5. 5 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 06 Feb, 2023 09:47 AM

   

   Hi Wayne,

   Glad you like Toolbox… OK, these 40 “damaged’ txns are interesting… As you say, most of them are older.. These are where you have an investment transaction that normally requires a security, but where the security is missing… In the register, these probably show a blank space in the security field?

   The likely scenarios are:
   1. These were created by a QIF import a long time ago (with a bug in the import code)
   2. These were created by OFX download a while ago with a bug in the code
   3. You manually deleted / removed a security from an investment account, that had txns linked to it, and then said YES to confirm…

   NOTE: this code was changed on 29th Oct 2021 2022.2 build 4060 to prevent this from occurring. So if you did this, then you did this before this date or on a version older that 2022.2 4. There is a bug in md+ as three seem to be md+ dated Sept 2022.

   So, do any of these scenarios ring bells? Did you remove securities from accounts and say YES?

   So - what is the fix?
   1. Let toolbox ‘patch’ the transactions. It will create a new security called Toolbox and it will link these txns to that security. At any point you can then go back to the txns and correct the security to the correct security.
   2. You manually review all 40 of these txns, edit and assign the correct security..

   Personally, I would use option 1

   BACKUP first.

   Let me know how it goes….

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6. 6 Posted by wuhl756 on 07 Feb, 2023 02:19 PM

   

   Hi Stuart,

   Sorry about the delay in replying.  Busy day and needed a glass of wine before
   tackling this.

   I ran the fix.  It had to run twice because the first run left an orphan
   unfixed, but the second run fixed it.

   You are correct that all of the damaged txns are from an from an earlier version
   of MD and possibly from manual changes that I made.  I did not upgrade to 2022
   until this past October.  Here are some observations:

   Most of the orphans (30+) were interest payments from the core cash position in
   a Fidelity brokerage account, very small amounts.  They were downloaded, not
   imported, and simply showed up as Action "Div," Description "INTEREST EARNED". 
   MD does not have an action category for interest on a core position, and I
   believe for "MiscInc" it still requires that a security be named.  I believe
   that more recently, Fidelity's downloads designate these as dividends from the
   mutual fund that is used for the core position, and there is no "cash" sitting
   there to earn interest.

   A few of the orphaned dividend payments were immediately and automatically
   reinvested.  The reinvestment entry showed the security but the dividend did
   not.  These were direct downloads from Fidelity, not qif or qfx imports, and I
   would not have changed them.  On those I've now filled in the proper security.

   A couple of the orphans are complete mysteries to me.  They reflect transfers of
   cash from one account into an IRA retirement account, where they were then used
   to purchase securities.  The mystery is that the orphaned transactions show this
   purpose, but the amount of the transaction is $ 0.00 when it should have been
   $6,500.00.  In order to show the transfer, I had entered them as BuyXfr, so I
   changed it to Xfr (even thought it's a zero/zed amount) which no longer requires
   a security.  I suppose I could delete them as they are zero/zed txns, but I will
   keep them in case there is some need to go back and track IRA contributions.

   Finally, two of the orphans are from an account that is a donor-advised fund,
   which holds investments until the donor directs them to be sent to a charity. 
   The payments to the charities downloaded as MiscExp which requires a security. 
   There is a security within the fund that is "sold" to fund the donations, but
   when two donations are made at the same time, there is only one entry for the
   sale.  So it's not feasible to enter each donation as a separate SellXfr.

   I do sometimes wish that MD had more Action options to account for some of these
   oddities.  I have a fake account called *Dummy Account that I have to use to
   sometimes show the other side of a transaction that doesn't need another side. 
   Likewise, maybe I need to just use "TOOLBOX FIX" as a fake security to show a
   cash transaction from an investment account that does not involve trading a
   security.

   Thanks for your help, I will wait and see if I get another instance of a phantom
   security showing up in my accounts.

   Wayne

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