currency linked to a stock

[Sébastien de Menten]

On Yahoo! Finance, there are multiple symbols for Yahoo! Inc in function of
the exchange (YHOO for Nasdaq, YHOO.BA for buenos aires, YHO.DE. For
XETRA,...).
Should all these "stocks" be the same commodity in GnuCash (with then
multiples prices in function of the currency) ? Or should they be different
commodities (with different namespaces) ? And if I have a brokerage account
to trade stocks, can I buy the yahoo stock on Nasdaq and sell it back on
XETRA ? Or should I be a bank/trader to be able to do that ? (I haven't
gone farther than sell/buy stock to/from the same exchange for my personal
use)
I thought there would be different stocks in GnuCash and that a stock would
have a single currency. Now, the example of the Cheddar is a bit stretched
as it looks more similar to "I buy a house in CAD and sell it back in USD"
(ie it could be considered as an asset/account and not as a commodity).
If one was to manage import/export of goods in multiple currencies (ie not
through an exchange), would it use "commodities" to do so in GnuCash (one
commodity per type of cheese (or type of electronic material or type
of clothes) ?

On Wednesday, December 17, 2014, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
> > On Dec 17, 2014, at 1:28 PM, Sébastien de Menten <sdementen at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> >
> > Hello,
> >
> > There is no currency explicitly linked to a given stock (is this
> correct?).
> >
> > As a result, one can attach to a given stock multiple prices in multiple
> > commodities.
> > For instance, YHOO (which is traded in USD) could have a price in CAD if
> > entered manually (in the price editor or through a transaction). When
> using
> > the online download, one always get the "correct" currency.
> > Shouldn't each security (that is not a currency) have its currency (like
> > USD for YHOO) ? or is this a feature ?
> >
> > On a related topic, if I have an account with YHOO stock as a commodity
> > (and so traded in USD), but that my default currency is CAD and that I
> have
> > downloaded both the YHOO prices in USD and the exchange rate USD/CAD, can
> > Gnucash convert the YHOO stock in CAD when displaying the Grand Total ?
> >
>
> It’s a feature. While a particular stock exchange will price a stock
> traded on that exchange in the national currency, stocks are traded on many
> exchanges and privately, and those trades can be denominated in any
> exchange mechanism the two traders agree on. Aside from online quotes,
> there’s no difference to GnuCash between Yahoo Stock and a wheel of Cheddar
> cheese. You can easily imagine buying a wheel of cheese in Wisconsin for
> say $15 on behalf of a friend at home who pays you C$20 for it. It’s
> actually possible (though not easy) to do the same with Yahoo stock.
>
> ISTR there was a bug or a complaint here that stocks priced in foreign
> currencies don’t roll up properly into top-level accounts. It *should*
> work, but apparently doesn’t right now.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
>
>