accounting for stock trades

[Derek Atkins]

Ed Warnicke <hagbard@physics.rutgers.edu> writes:

> Derek Atkins wrote:
> 
> <snip />
> 
> >>Also, how do you handle the issue of an account with two Lots like this:
> >>
> >>           Lot1
> >>           Amount        Value
> >>Split->     50 AMD        250 USD
> >>
> >>           Lot2
> >>           Amount        Value
> >>Split->     50 AMD        500 USD
> >>
> >>I then sell 80 AMD in a transaction where the AMDAccount spit is
> >>
> >>Split->    80 AMD   1600 USD
> >>
> >>How do I apply this single split to the above Lots?  Do I split the Splits?
> >>Combine the Lots?
> >>
> >
> >You split the sale Split into two splits, one for each lot.
> >
> This troubles me.  I expect most people, most of the time, to use a
> FIFO method
> for handling flow of commodities into and out of their account ( ie
> most folks
> aren't going to think about Lots most of the time ).  By forcing them
> to split their
> Split to match the Lots isn't necessarily a good solution.  I suppose
> we could
> autosplit them for folks if necessary...

Oh, of course it could be auto-split by gnucash..  in fact, the
register could always "auto-combine" all the splits from one
transaction into a single line-item to hide the fact that there are
multiple splits!

> Ed

-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
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