currency linked to a stock

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 17, 2014, at 1:28 PM, Sébastien de Menten <sdementen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> There is no currency explicitly linked to a given stock (is this correct?).
> 
> As a result, one can attach to a given stock multiple prices in multiple
> commodities.
> For instance, YHOO (which is traded in USD) could have a price in CAD if
> entered manually (in the price editor or through a transaction). When using
> the online download, one always get the "correct" currency.
> Shouldn't each security (that is not a currency) have its currency (like
> USD for YHOO) ? or is this a feature ?
> 
> On a related topic, if I have an account with YHOO stock as a commodity
> (and so traded in USD), but that my default currency is CAD and that I have
> downloaded both the YHOO prices in USD and the exchange rate USD/CAD, can
> Gnucash convert the YHOO stock in CAD when displaying the Grand Total ?
> 

It’s a feature. While a particular stock exchange will price a stock traded on that exchange in the national currency, stocks are traded on many exchanges and privately, and those trades can be denominated in any exchange mechanism the two traders agree on. Aside from online quotes, there’s no difference to GnuCash between Yahoo Stock and a wheel of Cheddar cheese. You can easily imagine buying a wheel of cheese in Wisconsin for say $15 on behalf of a friend at home who pays you C$20 for it. It’s actually possible (though not easy) to do the same with Yahoo stock.

ISTR there was a bug or a complaint here that stocks priced in foreign currencies don’t roll up properly into top-level accounts. It *should* work, but apparently doesn’t right now.

Regards,
John Ralls