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Schwab bond prices incorrect

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jdien07

29 Dec, 2023 04:57 AM

Hi, I've been using Moneydance for at least a couple decades, so I can say I'm a long-time happy customer. I could use some help, though. I just got switched to Schwab, when they bought out Ameritrade. I've just started using Moneydance+ to download the transactions, and mostly it's working but with some hiccups. One issue is that the bond prices are wrong and I can't seem to fix them. For example, for one bond that I had bought via Ameritrade, the price was 1.046. When I downloaded the Schwab records via MD+, it got confused by the fact that Schwab, for whatever reason, quotes the prices in lots of 100 (e.g., $104.6). It added this inflated price to the history and so the values are now inflated by a factor of 100. I tried deleting the new entry from the History, but while the Price graph updated accordingly, the inflated price has not. I even tried to manually add an entry to the History, but other than in the Price graph, this corrected value is being ignored. Much as I would enjoy the sudden windfall, I'd like my records to reflect the reality. So, my requests are: 1) please fix the Schwab download parser, 2) please fix it so that the most recent price in the History is used to calculate the value of the bonds. Thanks for reading this and keep up the good work!

Version 2023.3 (5064) Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS
Download was on 12/22/23

1. 1 Posted by dtd on 29 Dec, 2023 06:37 AM

   

   1) There's nothing MD can fix. MD+/Plaid reports what Schwab provides, it's not anything MD does. The parser, as you say, is to report the price provided.

   2) That's exactly what is happening. The most recent price calculates the value of the bonds - it's just that Schwab reports 104.6 whereas Ameritrade reported 1.046

   MD cannot/will not change the reported value - that would be manipulating what the company is reporting, thus making an assumption on potentially each and every company in the world.

   Now - how to fix the problem... Your statements where you change the history seems odd. I have bonds from Schwab (did not come from Ameritrade) and I have never been able to figure out how to download the values (i.e. don't know what to ask Quote Loader to download other than the CUSIP). I have to occasionally enter a new value into the history area that I get from the Schwab website (and mine have always said 1xx.xx)

   If yours from Ameritrade have always said 1.046, then you may have to change a 104.6 download into 1.046 and that should report your value properly. What I've always done is go to History, put in the "correct value" into the current price, then hit new to replace the value.

   The other alternative , unfortunately is to change everything in history... or maybe (I don't know if this would work) do a 1:100 reverse split when the change occurred? Maybe. I've never tried such a thing.

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2. 2 Posted by jdien07 on 29 Dec, 2023 08:12 PM

   

   1) I understand the concern about making assumptions about every company in the world. On the other hand, Schwab is the second largest one in the USA, so it does make sense to accommodate them somehow. How about this as a suggestion? This is basically about getting the units right (like feet versus miles). How about just adding a preference setting to the account, where the user can tell MD what kind of units to expect for bonds from that broker? That way, you give the user the power to deal with things like this without having to redo all the transactions?

   2) To clarify my request, the problem is that MD is not doing what you just said it should be doing. When I made a correction to the History by adding the true price, the value of the bonds did not update. If MD is indeed already supposed to be doing this, then my request is to help me troubleshoot why MD is not doing what it is supposed to be doing and help me fix it.

   Regarding the oddity, I didn't want to get into this, but to answer your question, I have not been able to download the values either using Quoteloader. I just downloaded the transactions using Mondeydance+. Schwab bought out Ameritrade and all our accounts were moved over to Schwab. The way they are handling the transition is that they also moved all the transaction records over to Schwab and prefixed them with "TDA" to denote that they occurred while the account was with the other company. For whatever reason, they also added an additional transaction for the current bond holdings in the form they would have had if the account had been with Schwab at the time. I had to manually delete this extra entry, as it caused MD to think I had twice as many bonds. This is a very special circumstance, so I am not making a request that MD handle this sort of thing. I'm only mentioning it because it is the reason that the Schwab style pricing value entered the History record. The problem then, again, is that when I manually deleted the Schwab entries into the History record, the bond price was not updated to reflect this change, as can be seen in the screenshot. As you can also see in the screenshot, I've tried adding the correct value, but it is not affecting the bond price, also seen in the screenshot. I've also tried quitting out of the program and restarting it.

   Aha!!! Reading your response very carefully, I figured out the bug. What I was doing was hitting the New button and then editing the price value in the new entry in the History table. What you are doing is editing the Current Price field and then hitting New. When I did it your way, it worked. So this is now a bug report. Clearly, when doing it my way, it should also work. Apparently MD only updates the bond value in response to the New button being clicked, not when the Price field of the existing History entries are modified.

   Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions and requests!

   Joe

   • Screenshot_from_2023-12-29_14-52-38.png 89.9 KB
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3. System closed this discussion on 29 Mar, 2024 08:20 PM.