Did you receive an alert from TIAA-CREF something like this?
This is to inform you that effective October 24, 2014 we are issuing live NASDAQ ticker symbols for the CREF Accounts. This will improve the overall experience for clients who own any of these accounts and will allow you and your clients to more easily access information such as price quotes on external websites.
For advisors utilizing our downloads, you will receive transitional transactions on or about October 28, 2014 selling out of CREF Accounts with their old ticker symbol and buying into CREF Accounts with their new ticker symbol. Many of the aggregation software tools advisors use can handle ticker symbol changes without having to post these transactions. We highly recommend checking with your software provider ahead of these changes to better understand your options.
Wondering what to do? Wondering whether PortfolioCenter is one of those tools that can “handle ticker symbol changes without having to post these transactions”?
Yes, PortfolioCenter is one of those tools. You have 2 options to handle this switch.
Option 1: Post everything as they sent it.
This is the simplest method, but it has the most disadvantages — granted those disadvantages may be minor, depending on your reports.
For option 1, simply create new securities with the new symbols and post all the buys/sells to exchange funds. This method will work and will not adversely affect performance.
However this method will create realized gain/losses in your accounts which will show up on your performance reports and transaction level reports (like the Position Performance Summary). Since these funds are most likely held in tax-deferred accounts, you may not care about the realized gain/losses for tax purposes. But it may raise client questions and cause confusion when you send your fourth quarter reports.
Option 2: Treat the event like what it actually is: a symbol change.
A much cleaner method of handling this switch is to simply change the symbols in PortfolioCenter and block the buys/sells so they are not posted. 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.
Below is a table of the old symbol(s) and the new symbols.
[table]| Fund Description | Original* Symbol | Original* Ticker | New Symbol |
| CREF Stock | CREFstok | CSTK# | QCSTRX |
| CREF Global Equities | CREFglob | CGLB# | QCGLRX |
| CREF Growth | CREFgrow | CGRW# | QCGRRX |
| CREF Equity Index | CREFequi | CEQX# | QCEQRX |
| CREF Social Choice | CREFsoci | CSCL# | QCSCRX |
| CREF Bond Market | CREFbond | CBND# | QCBMRX |
| CREF Inflation-Linked Bond | CREFinfb | CILB# | QCILRX |
| CREF Money Market | CREFmony | CMMA# | QCMMRX |
| TIAA Real Esatate | TIAAreal | TREA# | QREARX |
*Depending on where and how you retrieve your Tiaa data, you will have one or the other of theses symbols.
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