GNUCash is making up prices

[Bill Gribble]

On Sun, 2001-09-16 at 21:29, Randall Hopper wrote:
> I have a Mutual Fund Account.  If I key in 0.0163979 for shares and 106.16
> for price and nothing for Buy (for a dividend reinvestment transaction),
> then GNUCash changes my price to 106.098.  Why?  This is false.

No, it's correct.  That is the price you paid per share for that lot of
shares.  You can make an argument that this price ought not to be used
to value your entire holdings of the fund, since it's not exactly the
same price you would have paid for a larger lot of shares, but it is the
price you paid... price is the ratio of the amount you paid for a lot to
the number of items in that lot, and nothing more.  The "market price"
or quoted price doesn't really mean anything. 

For example, if apples are labeled "3 / $1" and you buy one, it will
probably cost you $0.34.  The price of that apple is $0.34, despite what
the sign says, because you paid $0.34 and got one apple.  If you bought
3, the price would be $0.3333333333, but that's irrelevant because you
only bought one. 

The Buy amount *does* have to be an integer number of cents, because
that's the basic unit that we do financial transactions in if the
currency is USD, and your dividend payment that you reinvested has an
exact value in cents. 

If you wish to have your holdings valued according to the current market
price, it's my understanding that you can do this using the price
editor, but I'm not entirely sure about that. 

b.g.