TIAA-CREF is changing symbols again. You probably received an alert like this:
With TIAA-CREF’s implementation of a new class structure for its eight CREF Accounts, new ticker symbols issued by NASDAQ will take effect at the close of business on Friday, April 24. As of that date, some of your clients’ CREF holdings may be automatically moved to one of these new classes based on the product or plan they hold. If you are utilizing our data downloads, you will receive transactions reflecting these changes for your affected clients on or about Tuesday, April 28.
Wondering how to handle this change? This change is slightly different than their previous symbol change.
Option 1: Post everything as they sent it — almost.
This is the simplest method, but it has the some disadvantages — however those disadvantages may be minor, depending on which reports you use.
For option 1, simply create new securities with the new symbols and post all the buys/sells to exchange funds. This method works and does not adversely affect performance. However, I recommend changing the symbols from “User Defined” to “Mutual Funds” and blocking the duplicate deposits/withdrawals.
Downside: This method will create realized gain/losses in your accounts which will appear on your performance reports and some transaction level reports (like the Position Performance Summary). Since these funds are likely held in tax-deferred accounts, you may not care about the realized gain/losses. But it may raise client questions and cause confusion on next quarter’s reports.
Option 2: Treat the event like what it actually is: a share-class exchange.
A cleaner method of handling this switch is to treat this event as a share-class exchange. You can use the Transaction Writer Merger/Exchange wizard or simply change the downloaded transactions from buys/sells to debits/credits. While this takes a small amount of manual entry, it won’t create any realized gain/losses and therefore your reports will be cleaner and more accurate.
Here are the new symbols:
[table]| Fund Description | R1 | R2 | R3 |
| CREF Stock | QCSTRX | QCSTPX | QCSTIX |
| CREF Global Equities | QCGLRX | QCGLPX | QCGLIX |
| CREF Growth | QCGRRX | QCGRPX | QCGRIX |
| CREF Equity Index | QCEQRX | QCEQPX | QCEQIX |
| CREF Social Choice | QCSCRX | QCSCPX | QCSCIX |
| CREF Bond Market | QCBMRX | QCBMPX | QCBMIX |
| CREF Inflation-Linked Bond | QCILRX | QCILPX | QCILIX |
| CREF Money Market | QCMMRX | QCMMPX | QCMMIX |
If you updated your symbols last October, most likely you have the R1 symbols now.
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