investment terminology and types

[Derek Atkins]

Jon Lapham <lapham at extracta.com.br> writes:

> This is the intro to investments I've been working on:
> 
> http://www.jandr.org/temp/gnucashdocs/invest_concepts1.html
> 
> In section "7.1.1 Terminology", can someone proof the definitions of
> terminologies... and/or suggest additional.

I'll try to take a look at this...

> In section "7.1.2 Types of Investments", I want to make a list of the
> general kinds of investments.  I have 3:
> 
> 1) "Interest-bearing ACCOUNT" (account is all caps b/c I don't like
> that word... a CD is not an account)

I'm not convinced these are really investments, per se.  A Checking
Account or Savings Account is just a "Bank" Type..  I wouldn't
consider it an investment.  Nor would I consider a CD to be an
investment.

> 2) "Publically traded company common stock": is there another name for
> this which would include mutual funds?

Ok, THESE are investments.  Note that there are lots of different
types of investments.  There are pure stocks, then there are lots of
mutual funds.  I cannot think of a term that matches except "stocks
and mutual funds".

> 3) "Assets that increase in value" ugh, terrible title.  I mean stuff
> like houses.  Is there a better title for this?

"Fixed Assets"

> are there any others?  The idea of these groups of investment types is
> to try to organize the investments in terms of how GnuCash deals with
> them.

I guess I still don't understand what you're trying to accomplish.
GnuCash has the following (asset) account types:

        Cash
        Bank
        Asset
        Stock
        Mutual
        A/Receivable

So, map what you've got to the above set.  Cash is obvious.  Bank is,
well, bank accounts: Checking, Savings, simple interest accounts, etc.
Assets are fixed assets, generally.  Stock and Mutual are pretty much
the same -- I'm not even sure why there are two different account
types, but basically those are for "investment" items where you keep
track of a number of shares of something.  Finally, A/Receivable is a
business asset.

-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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