Reporting: weighted average price source

[David G. Hamblen]

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
>
>