stock thoughts

[Derek Atkins]

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

> I was running through the process of buying and selling stocks, and a
> few thoughts occurred to me.
> 
> Assume you use the "stock" account type, and follow the proceedure to
> build a stock commodity, set the price in the price editor, etc.  When
> you sell the stock, for a profit, how does this income get accounted
> for?  Is the stock account itself a pseudo-income account?

This is a bug.  This is what Lots are supposed to solve.  It has not
been finished.

What you need to do is create a split txn that balances out the profit
based on the cost of the stock and then link that split txn into a
cap-gains income account.

> It seems to me that stocks could be tracked in GC the same way we
> handle Fixed Assets, starting with a regular asset account.  Then,
> upon selling the stock, you would record an income transaction into
> the stock asset account, then record a transaction from the stock
> asset account to your bank account.

Something like this could theoretically work, but it's nice to see
both the #shares and price simultaneously.

> Just thinking out loud.  Any thoughts out there on this?

-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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