Automatic price quotes & PostgreSQL backend

[Christopher Singley]

On Tue, Nov 19, 2013 at 8:01 AM, David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I agree with you about how nice it would be to have reliable retrieval of
> prices. However, from a strict accounting perspective, the trading value of
> a particular asset is not relevant. The value is only relevant when an
> asset is sold.


Sometimes I have fervently wished that my auditors would agree with your
position, but alas, GAAP mandates exactly the opposite when it comes to
securities available for sale - the current trading value of a particular
asset is far & away its most relevant attribute.

If you are an individual investor who holds fully paid-up investments (i.e.
no margin borrowing, not used to collateralize a bank loan), then I guess
you are probably free to ignore the mark-to-market accounting mandated by
GAAP and just focus on realized gains for tax accounting, if you so
choose.  However, it's probably not wise to do so - you're ignoring the
opportunity cost of swapping your existing investments for other, better
investments... which is the main thing that matters, no?

To the extent you're using an accounting system to inform your
decision-making process... which is about the highest & best use of an
accounting system... I can't imagine why you'd want NOT to measure the
primary economic activity (i.e. generating investment gains) and simply
focus on the secondary tax effects consequent upon such activity.  While
it's a good idea to remain emotionally detached from fluctuations in asset
value, it's a bad idea to be actually unaware of them.

Many/most users of financial accounts really need financial reports in
multiple accounting bases - GAAP, cash, modified cash a/k/a tax basis...
It's tricky to implement awareness of the timing differences, so I'm not
surprised that GnuCash hasn't got these features, but they're highly
desirable, not irrelevant, and certainly not verboten by the Accounting
Powers That Be, regardless of whatever finger-wagging you may have received
from various financial planner types.  In point of fact, the strict
accounting perspective on this matter is much more closely aligned with
that of a crack-smoking Silicon Valley worker refreshing the finance pages
every 10 minutes to check the current value of his stock options.

Please excuse the length of wind.  I think I'll get back to imprudently
day-trading my portfolio & using GnuCash to manage the finances of a
Fortune 500 company against the advice of its developers.

Cheers,
Chris