Price History Too Big

Posted by traderdad on December 5, 2006, 4:42 pm

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I have many securities that I no longer own, and haven't for a long time. Is
there an easy way to eliminate the price histories for these stocks? There
used to be a way to thin out the price history by replacing the daily quotes
with weekly; anything like this still exist in Q2007?

Posted by R. C. White on December 5, 2006, 6:07 pm

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Hi, traderdad.

How big is "big"?

I've been using Quicken since 1990. My QDF file is about 24 MB. My QPH
file is less than 3 MB.

John Pollard can tell you how to "thin out" the file if you really need to.
But I suspect that Quicken does a pretty good job of it behind the scenes.
Keeping the histories for securities you owned in the past might let you
recreate a net worth statement for 12/31/99, for example, but there probably
is no other good use that I can think of. You must, of course, keep actual
prices involved in your own transactions, but not quotes of what other
investors might have been willing to pay for a security on a particular day.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)
rc@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Currently running Vista Ultimate x64)

>I have many securities that I no longer own, and haven't for a long time.

>Is there an easy way to eliminate the price histories for these stocks?

>There used to be a way to thin out the price history by replacing the daily

>quotes with weekly; anything like this still exist in Q2007?

Posted by traderdad on December 6, 2006, 8:00 am

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RC - My file is about 30 MB. Last year about this time my whole program
froze. I was a victim of the "calculate tax saving possibilities" feature
that disabled my program because I had too many securities. I am an active
trader, and make between 10 and 30 transactions per month. I have a lot of
stocks with 30 to 90 days of history, after which I sold them. I'd love to
shrink that data file.

> Hi, traderdad.

> How big is "big"?

> I've been using Quicken since 1990. My QDF file is about 24 MB. My QPH

> file is less than 3 MB.

> John Pollard can tell you how to "thin out" the file if you really need

> to. But I suspect that Quicken does a pretty good job of it behind the

> scenes. Keeping the histories for securities you owned in the past might

> let you recreate a net worth statement for 12/31/99, for example, but

> there probably is no other good use that I can think of. You must, of

> course, keep actual prices involved in your own transactions, but not

> quotes of what other investors might have been willing to pay for a

> security on a particular day.

> RC

> --

> R. C. White, CPA

> San Marcos, TX

> (Retired. No longer licensed to practice public accounting.)

> rc@grandecom.net

> Microsoft Windows MVP

> (Currently running Vista Ultimate x64)

>>I have many securities that I no longer own, and haven't for a long time.

>>Is there an easy way to eliminate the price histories for these stocks?

>>There used to be a way to thin out the price history by replacing the

>>daily quotes with weekly; anything like this still exist in Q2007?

Posted by JM on December 6, 2006, 10:07 am

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traderdad wrote:

> I have many securities that I no longer own, and haven't for a long time. Is

> there an easy way to eliminate the price histories for these stocks? There

> used to be a way to thin out the price history by replacing the daily quotes

> with weekly; anything like this still exist in Q2007?

Here is a link to an earlier post in this forum:
http://tinyurl.com/yctg4q

Have tinkered with it and It is definitely not an easy solution - but
it is a method if you have the time [and patience!!].

Posted by John Pollard on December 6, 2006, 11:53 am

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>I have many securities that I no longer own, and haven't for a

>long time. Is there an easy way to eliminate the price

>I have many securities that I no longer own, and haven't for a

>long time. Is there an easy way to eliminate the price

>histories for these stocks? There used to be a way to thin out

>the price history by replacing the daily quotes with weekly;

>anything like this still exist in Q2007?

I don't have Q2007, so I can't tell you if it has some way to
clean your price history that's not available in the versions I
do have (Q2002, Q2004, Q2005, Q2006).

There are at least two different approaches I know of that you
could take to reducing the number of prices in your history:
start with an empty price history and rebuild; or remove
selected prices from your current price history. I think it
would be your call as to which way created less work for you.

You can create a new empty price history file by just renaming
QDATA.QPH (where QDATA is the name of your Quicken data). Next
time you start Quicken and open QDATA, Quicken will recreate the
QPH file with no prices.

From there you can use Quicken's price history download to
replace many prices (see Quicken Help for the rules for what
prices will be downloaded). You can also use sources like Yahoo
to download prices in .csv format and "import" them into Quicken
(most useful for history more than five years old).

I do not know of any method to get electronic historical prices
for non-publicly traded securities. You would either have to
manually re-enter those prices; or export prices from your
current file, then massage the resulting QIF file to contain
only prices that could not be recovered any other way ... later
"importing" that QIF file.

Alternatively, you can delete prices from within Quicken. When
you "Edit Price History" for a given security, you can select
groups of prices (as you would select files in Windows Explorer)
and delete them. If you sold a security two years ago and did
not want any prices in Quicken after the sale date, you could
easily delete all those prices with one select, one delete.

--
John Pollard
First initial underscore Last name at mchsi dot com
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