summarize historical data for starting position

[red_puppy]

I am trying to create a portfolio to represent a 529 account consisting of two funds (70/30%) at Vanguard. Unfortunately the financial institution where these funds are held does not have an OFX server. I don't really want to go back and enter several years of historical transaction data but I would like to represent invested, reinvested and fee amounts up to some starting date from which point forward I hope to record more detailed transaction data. So for 9/30/2009 I have a statement that indicates number of shares of each fund held, the prices on that date and the $ value for each. I was able to harvest summary transaction data to arrive at a total $ amount invested, total $ amount of dividends reinvested, and total $ amount of fees paid. I am sort of confused how to represent all this in a starting position to still get the $ and shares to add up. Can you suggest a cookbook approach to handle this? Thanks

[Mark]

Hi red_puppy,

Create your new investments, and just start them off with 0 shares in the New Investment dialog. Open up the Data Register, and record a Purchase and then a Reinvestment. You'll have to do a little math to divide up the shares appropriately between the purchase and the reinvestment. Here is an example:

Say you ended up owning 1,000 shares, and you had purchases of $9,000 and reinvestments of $1,000. Record a purchase of 900 shares for $9,000 and a reinvestment of 100 shares for $1,000. This way, you'll end up with the right number of shares, allocated appropriately between the purchased and reinvested shares.

[red_puppy]

Thanks Mark. I split the investment, reinvested dividend and fees 70/30 according to allocation between the funds. Then for VITPX I have 217.34594 shares after investment of $5600, reinvested dividends of $241.66 and fees $41.33. I solved:
5600x + 241.66x - 41.33x = 217.34594
to get the number of shares to assign to investment, dividend, and fees. I characterized both the dividend and the fees as a reinvestment (but with a negative value and number of shares for the fees). This assigns a 'price' for that catch-up date which is a sort of an average but not the actual price on that date.

What concerns me now is that if I obtain new Prices information by Internet Retrieve could I clobber this useful average price obtained by the method above and to some extent undo my work? Or do the prices obtained by Internet retrieve only provide background data for graphs without affesting transactions?

[Mark]

Hi red_puppy,

The prices retrieved from an internet retrieve update your investment's closing price. This is independent from the transaction pricing. Retrieving prices will not affect any of your recorded transactions.

The retrieved closing prices will affect the market value for that day, but the cost basis is determined from your transactions, and will not change by retrieving transactions.

[red_puppy]

Hi Mark -
Thanks for the clarification. I haven't been on this forum for long but I really appreciate the speed and clarity with which you provide responses to questions about Fund Manager!