Common wisdom is that a good low-effort investment strategy is to choose an asset allocation, then rebalance your portfolio to stick to it.
I've been using Quicken Deluxe for this. Obviously it's designed for it (it has a rebalance screen).
However, I just upgraded from 2012 to 2015, and it radically changed what it thought my asset allocation was. I believe it decided that some funds were partially smallcap that used to not be, and now says I am 25% overweighted in smallcap. It may have changed how it treats "midcap", i.e. moved it from "large cap" to "small cap." It's hard to tell exactly what happened because it doesn't have historical info on asset classes.
Actually moving that chunk around could incur significant taxes, and I don't want to shift so much so quickly anyway.
What is your experience? Have you seen a shift in asset class data? Do you use Quicken's asset classes for an asset allocation strategy? If not Quicken, what else?
I decided to look at asset classes of a particular fund. I picked Amcap R6 (ticker symbol RAFGX). At present:
- Quicken 2015 deluxe in product (data from value line?) says 53% largecap, 24% smallcap, 6% international, 13% cash, 4% other
- Morningstar (ironically also quicken online) says 13% cash, 77% US, 6% non-US, 4% other
- Google says 13% cash, 83% stock, 4% other
This analyst article says "the fund [keeps] roughly one fourth of its assets in mid- and small-caps .."
This question is similar
- Here are people saying Quicken is not great
- Here is someone saying Quicken data is different from what value line might show on its own website
