simple howto for selling stocks

Charles Day cedayiv at gmail.com
Tue May 13 15:28:38 EDT 2008


On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:42 AM, Charles Day <cedayiv at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 10:34 AM, Callum E Murdoch <cem22b at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Hi Charles,
> > Sorry for delay in reply i'm in a remote location in Africa and comms
> > have been down for days.
> > Anyway I guess i'm still missing somthing here i dont see how my
> > accounts wont balance since the original entry in gnucash i did manually
> > using Equity:Opening balance shares. Whats the difference of entering
> > the proceeds of the sale into my Bestinvest broker account and then the
> > new funds being purchased out of this account using all the cash.
> >  i have done this
> > Step 1 under fund A sold all units for 1000 which is entered as a
> > transfer to Bestinvest account.
> > Step 2 In bestInvest set up new sub account Fund C, which is purchased
> > using the 1000 from the sale of Fund A
> >
> > Using this method is very straight forward am i missing somthing ?
> >
>
A correction to my reply: Assuming that the value of those units of Fund A
was not 1000 on the day of your Equity:Opening Balance transaction, there is
a capital gain (or loss) from the sale which constitutes income.


> Assuming that you bought those units of Fund A for less than 1000, then
> you have a capital gain from the sale, which constitutes income. The simple
> transfer you suggest in Step 1 doesn't capture this and will throw your
> books out of balance. Quicken hid this complication from you.
>
> Please read sections 2.2 and 2.3 of this tutorial. The examples are in
> terms of foreign currency, but apply equally to stocks or investment funds:
> http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/~selinger/accounting/tutorial.html#1<http://www.mathstat.dal.ca/%7Eselinger/accounting/tutorial.html#1>
> .
>
> Cheers,
> Charles
>
>
> > regards
> > Callum
> >
> > On Sat, 2008-05-10 at 22:48 -0700, Charles Day wrote:
> > > On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 2:03 PM, Callum Murdoch <cem22b at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >         Hi,
> > >         I guess i did'nt explain properly, I have an ISA with 4
> > >         seperate fund
> > >         holdings within it. I am transfering several of them to
> > >         different funds.
> > >         This is handled by the broker (Co-funds) by selling the ones i
> > >         want to get
> > >         rid of and buying the new funds i have chosen with the
> > >         proceeds. This all
> > >         under one account. These are also tax free investments.my
> > >         structure is as
> > >         follows
> > >         Bestinvest (broker account)
> > >         --Fund A
> > >         -- Fund B
> > >         -- Fund C
> > >
> > >         selling B & C and buying D & E  all under Bestinvest.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I would do this as:
> > > 1. Sell B using the method described in the documentation.
> > > 2. Sell C using the method described in the documentation.
> > > 3. Buy D using the method described in the documentation.
> > > 4. Buy E using the method described in the documentation.
> > >
> > > Except for the need to manually account for the capital gains, this is
> > > the same as you would do in Quicken. Your broker should provide you
> > > with the basis and capital gains figures.
> > >
> > > Since you've said that the capital gains income is not taxable, I'd
> > > recommend creating a specific income account for this, named something
> > > like "Income:Tax-Free Capital Gains".
> > >
> > > -Charles
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >         On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 9:30 PM, Derek Atkins
> > >         <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:
> > >
> > >         > Hi,
> > >         >
> > >         > Quoting corkscrew60 <cem22b at gmail.com>:
> > >         >
> > >         > I am a new user to gnucash i have swapped over from quicken.
> > >         On the whole i
> > >         >> like it better except for selling stock. I just cant get my
> > >         head round the
> > >         >> instructions given in the help file. Does anyone know of a
> > >         simple howto
> > >         >> giving a step by step on how to do this.
> > >         >> I have an investment account set up with a number of funds
> > >         within it. I
> > >         >> have
> > >         >> sold a complete subset and bought another all under the
> > >         same investment
> > >         >> account. The instructions in the help file mentioning
> > >         setting up a capital
> > >         >> gains account I dont see why i need this when the money
> > >         from the sale
> > >         >> satys
> > >         >> within the investment account to make the new purchase of
> > >         the different
> > >         >> funds
> > >         >>
> > >         >
> > >         > Are you buying the same funds/stocks from the other broker?
> > >          Or are
> > >         > you selling FundA and buying FundB?  In the latter case then
> > >         yes,
> > >         > this IS a capital gain and you should account for it.  The
> > >         basis of
> > >         > FundB will be the ending value of FundA, but you still have
> > >         a capital
> > >         > gain on FundA from when you purchased it to when you sold
> > >         it.
> > >         >
> > >         > See for example
> > >         http://cvs.gnucash.org/docs/guide/capgain_example1.html
> > >         >
> > >         > Please remember to CC this list on all your replies.
> > >         >> You can do this by using Reply-To-List or Reply-All.
> > >         >>
> > >         >
> > >         > -derek
> > >         >
> > >         > --
> > >         >      Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media
> > >         Laboratory
> > >         >      Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board
> > >          (SIPB)
> > >         >      URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA
> > >         N1NWH
> > >         >      warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key
> > >         available
> > >         >
> > >         >
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> > >
> > >
> >
> >
>


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