Reporting: weighted average price source
David G. Hamblen
dhamblen at roadrunner.com
Fri Jul 11 08:11:30 EDT 2008
Charles Day wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Christian Stimming <stimming at tuhh.de
> <mailto:stimming at tuhh.de>> wrote:
>
> Am Montag, 7. Juli 2008 18:42 schrieb Charles Day:
> > > So it's not a question of absolute values in bookkeeping. It's
> > > a question of absolute values in computing share prices. Not
> > > the same thing.
> >
> > I agree with Derek. That is, the "weighted average" price source
> is not
> > intended to compute the cost of your holdings, but rather to
> compute the
> > volume-weighted average price of all buys AND sells. So it needs
> to keep
> > using the absolute value. However, it does need to be changed:
> it should
> > ignore exchanges with a zero "amount" in the split.
> >
> > So I think we need to add a new price source of "Cost" which
> computes
> > without absolute value and does include zero "amount" splits.
>
> Yes. The existing "weighted average" answers a different question
> that the one
> you are more interested in.
>
> > I do think a volume-weighted average price can be useful; it's
> just more
> > appropriate for measuring your personal trading performance.
> Maybe there
> > should be a performance report designed around that.
>
> Exactly, and it has been introduced precisely to measure personal
> trading
> performance. I recall I basically used this in the "price
> scatterplot", which
> is probably only about what you said. For the cost of your current
> holdings,
> I agree this is probably wrong. Feel free to move the old one to a
> different
> name or rename the new and the old. Maybe the old "weighted
> average" should
> even be available only in the price scatterplot and nowhere else.
> But simply
> replacing it is IMHO not the best way to go.
>
>
> I've added the new price source which I have called "Average Cost"
> (for now, at least). Committed as r17266.
Now that r17292 enables me to test things, the "Average Cost" on the
balance sheet does what I think it should, except when a position is
closed out (as in Derek's initial example above). With no current
holdings in a stock, I get blanks for that stock and for the Total
Assets, Liabilities, etc., just $ signs. If I unselect "Compute
Unrealized Gains...", then the Liabilities and Equity section print
properly, but the Assets total remains blank. Looks like a total
somewhere is being skipped if there's a funny entry. I'll see what I
can find.
>
> For now I have not removed the "Weighted Average" price source from
> any reports. I will have a look at that later on.
>
> -Charles
>
>
> Christian
>
>
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