"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

<snip
- quote -


Whoops. This worked for mine. Forgot to mention that my wife's new IRA is
two old accounts, now merged into one. Merging investment accounts with a
transaction history in each seems to be a problem. Have a rabbit to pull out
of your hat on that, too?

"Cal Learner-- MVP" wrote:

- quote -


Really? Here's what the online documentation says, under "Transfer holdings
or roll over an account in the Portfolio Manager"

*************************
If you roll over a retirement account or change brokerages, you need to
update your Portfolio Manager account information. The best way to transfer
your holdings to a new account in Money is to set up the new account for
online updates. That way, your brokerage can provide information on your
holdings, and you won't have to type it in.

1. Go to the Portfolio Manager.
2. In the left pane under Common tasks, click Work with accounts, and then
click Add an account.
3. Follow the instructions on the screen.

If you updated your original accounts by typing in transactions, close out
your positions (Your stake in an investment in a specific account, either by
owning stock (a long position) or by owing stock (a short position).) in
those accounts. To do so, in the Portfolio Manager, click the investment
name. In the left pane, click Work with investments, and then click Update
your shares. Enter a new quantity of 0 to reflect that all the shares have
been moved to your new account.
*************************

Unless I'm doing this wrong, all it effectively seems to do is set up the
new account.

- quote -


Indirectly. Again, unless I'm doing it wrong, the new account seems to have
no knowledge of where the shares came from and the transaction history under
them. To have it do that, I was setting up a transfer instead of the above.


- quote -


Thanks. I hadn't thought of that, and it sounds like a very workable solution.

If you have a comment on where I might be going wrong following what
Microsoft says to do above, please do. Otherwise consider my question
answered, with much appreciation.


- quote -

In microsoft.public.money, Max wrote:

- quote -

No, the transaction history of the old closed account is still
there.

- quote -

Are you commenting on annualized returns computed on the gain/loss
of a day or two being meaningless?

Are you trying to understand the calculation?

Do you have a problem with the performance calculations being
computed independently for the old and the new account? If you are
continuing with the same holdings, after making an extra file
backup/copy you could just
1. delete the transfers,
2. delete the new account
3. disable online access for the old account if applicable
4. Change the name, institution, account number etc of the old
account to that for the new account. Enter a comment to record that
happened.
5. Enable the revised account for online access if appropriate and
available.

- quote -

I need to know which. I've been trying to transfer an IRA account from an old
financial institution that doesn't have online services to a new one that
does. If I follow explicitly the instructions MS gives to do this, I lose the
transaction history and cost basis of the underlying investments. It simply
sets up a new account.

If I set up a transfer instead, I keep the cost basis and it's accurate, but
I find I'm now earning an average annual return of around 3000% on the
underlying mutual funds... the small cap fund is booming along nicely at
52000%.

Needless to say I'm near ecstatic at these results and quit my job last
week. But since then I've had nagging doubts. Anyone else run across this?