Fidelity cash management account buy and sell transactions are both displaying "Buy."
My Fidelity IRA and brokerage accounts are working properly, but for my Fidelity cash management account, both buy and sell transactions are displaying as "Buy". A bit more explanation: Cash in the account is actually invested in shares (always worth $1) in a cash ETF called SPAXX. When I deposit $140 to the account (see April 7 on attached screenshot), it displays two transactions, one showing the deposit coming in, the other showing that I bought 140 shares of SPAXX.
But when I take money out of the account, either via transfer to another acct or by spending via debit card (as I did April 4 on attached screenshot), it shows "Debit card purchase via Cash App" $35 (which it also incorrectly displays as "Buy" instead of "Payment." It also then displays a second transaction saying I bought 35 shares of SPAXX, even though I actually had to sell 35 shares to fund the payment.
I see that the number of shares, 140 and 35 in my examples, display in different colors, so perhaps the software is saying I bought +140 shares and "bought" -35 shares. Obviously that's needlessly confusing.
Comments
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Hello @KB2014,
Thanks for reaching out! To give us a better understanding of the situation, can you provide a screenshot showing how these transactions are supposed to look from the bank's website? I believe this would be helpful in determining what exactly is occurring here. Feel free to redact any personal information!
-Coach Jon
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I took three screenshots. One is of Fidelity's website display of recent activity, which is what you requested. Note it doesn't even bother to display changes in the "core" security; it just stashes the funds there when deposited, corresponding to a Buy, and withdraws them when needed, corresponding to a Sell.
I also pulled excerpts from the March statement, one showing my activity, the other showing "core" activity, i.e., buying and selling SPAXX, the money market funds. Honestly, I doubt anyone really cares about it, which is why they don't even show it on the website's activity list. It's more confusing than helpful; it's understood that it's happening behind the scenes. It would be as if every time you looked at your checking account on your bank's website, each check showed the amount, who you paid, etc., and then there was another transaction showing that the bank took money from their reserve account and transferred it to your checking account to cover the check. It's just noise.
I understand Quicken is just showing what the bank sends, but I doubt cash in and cash out are both coded as Buys of the money market funds. As I mentioned in my original post, the amounts change signs, so from a mathematics perspective, I guess it sort of makes sense, although not really, as my $140 deposit showed a Buy of 140 shares of SPAXX @$1, with the rightmost two columns both displaying black numbers, while my $35 payment shows as a Buy of 35 shares of SPAXX @$1 (which is clearly wrong; they had to sell 35 shares to cover my debit) and the rightmost two columns have different colors: black and green. Honestly, none of it makes any sense. It's too convoluted to understand. And that's true for all the brokerage and IRA accounts: they're hopelessly confusing. I used to be able to use traditional Quicken religiously, for over 20 years. It was accurate and clear. Simplifi can't handle investments at all. That's very disappointing.
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Hello @KB2014,
Thanks for the screenshots, they are helpful. To clarify this issue, is this a one time thing with these specific transactions, or is this a continual problem that you have noticed over time? If it is a case of the former, I would just edit the buy transactions to be payment/deposits as you state they should be. Is your holdings and balances correct themselves?
-Coach Jon
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No, it's nothing new. I just scrolled back over the past 12 months, and there are no "Sell SPAXX" transactions at all; every time cash went in OR out of the account, it was marked as a "Buy SPAXX" transaction.
Again this is a cash management account (with a debit card and check-writing ability), not a brokerage or IRA. BUT…
I just did a deeper dive, and the other accounts work exactly the same with cash withdrawals or deposits. It's a different ETF: FDRXX, but that's immaterial. If I buy or sell an actual security, it displays Buy or Sell. But when it comes to the "core" cash account, it says Buy whether it's a positive or negative cash-consuming or cash-generating transaction (buying or selling a security) cash dividend, cash deposit, or cash withdrawal, whatever. Buying or selling a normal security shows as Buy or Sell. But buying or selling the money fund which is designated as the core account always displays Buy. The number at the rightmost column is either green (preceded by a plus sign), or is black.
Most recent example: Monday I sold several securities in my main IRA. They all display correctly as Sell, security name, correct number of shares and price, and the right column shows a + green number, I guess saying I generated that much cash by the sale. The same day I bought some other securities, and they show as Buy with a black number in the right column with no sign.
On Tuesday, when the sales settled, there is a Buy of FDRXX for the appropriate amount of cash proceeds from the securities sales. It displays a black number on the right with no sign. I guess it's saying that my generated cash from the sale was used to buy the FDRXX money market funds shares. Two days later, in an unrelated transaction, I withdrew $300 from the account to be transferred to my checking account at another bank. It shows as Buy FDRXX, 300 shares@$1, with a green +300.00 on the right. The two transactions clearly had the opposite effect on the amount of money in FDRXX, and the right column showed + and - (implied) correctly, but both transactions are labeled as Buy.
I don't know if Quicken's software is interpreting the transactions incorrectly or if Fidelity is mislabeling them.
Hope that answers your question. More than you ever wanted to know, right? Me too! LOL
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Thank you for the additional information,
To clarify, everything in the transactions is correct except that the Sell transactions show Buy in the Action column? Are your holdings and balances for the affected accounts correct?
Thank you!
-Coach Kristina
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Your clarification is correct. Yes, balances and holdings are correct.
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@KB2014 Your posts on this I follow because I would like to get one of these accounts. I am with Fidelity already so if you ever get this all working right, please let us know. Until then, I am staying away.
BTW, my Fidelity IRA downloads fine but it is disconcerting as I get 2 transactions for each dividend. One is a dividend or maybe a buy and the other is an offsetting Reinvest Dividend. I edit the latter and add the dividend amount which then changes the transaction to 0.00 and delete the former one. It is really strange cause Quicken Classic does this for me, but Simplifi doesn't. I assume it is downloaded the same into each app.
Steve
Quicken Simplifi (Safari & iOS) Since 2021
Quicken Classic (MacOS) Since 20091 -
Hello @KB2014,
Thanks for the clarification. If you download a CSV file from the bank's website, can you verify whether the transactions in question are also listed as "Buy" transactions there? This would be a good way of determining if the transactions are coming in this way from the bank's side.
It is good that the balances and holdings are at least correct. If the only issue is that the transactions are listed as "Buy" and the financial institution is not sending this data like this, I wonder if resetting the account connection would resolve the issue. You may certainly try, and keep an eye out going forward to see if the transactions download normally afterward as well.
-Coach Jon
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Thanks for the suggestion, Jon. I think I'm going to just accept what it looks like and move on. I don't generate a ton of transactions in the cash management account, and I can figure it out. I used to use traditional Quicken and it accounted for all my Fidelity transactions in my IRAs, brokerage, and cash management accounts correctly and precisely. There are far too many problems with Simplifi's handling of Fidelity accounts, I'm just giving up. I keep a separate spreadsheet that analyzes what I need, and I can access Fidelity's web site when I have a question or need data, so I'm just not going to rely on Simplifi for anything related to my IRAs. I'll use it to cross-check things like IRA contributions and withdrawals, but that's about it. Thanks for looking into this though.
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