GNUCash is making up prices

[Linas Vepstas]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 06:41:00AM -0600, ghaverla@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca was heard to remark:
> a legal end at a mutual fund company can say what is
> legally the case.  Whatever happens, I don't think any

When I purchase X shares, I expect to receive X shares.  
Any other answer is grounds for a lawsuit charging fraud.

The price is never a 'conserved' quantity.  It fluctuates from second to
second.  Just look at a ticker tape.  No two trades are ever executed at
the same price.   There is never one price, there are four:
bid, ask, last, and the price that you get, which should be between bid,
and ask, somewhere not far from last. 

Prices not only fluctuate stochasitcally in time, they also vary from
one point in space to another.  One can make money by buying in one
place in space and selling at another place in space at the same time.
The dictionary word for this is 'arbitrage'.

'arbitraging the pit': two brokers make a pact to skim money: they
stand at opposite sides of the trading floor, the 'pit'.  One sells 
at a higher price than the other is buying at, something that can be
easily done because of the general confusion of the open-outcry system.
They take no risk, since they held the stock for zero seconds.  However, 
they can pocket a tidy profit with this scheme.  On the NYSE, and most
first-world exchanges, this is illegal, and grounds for expulsion.

I once bought a big electric motor. They guy went next door, bought it,
carried it back, and sold it to me for a $20 markup.  Arghh. (Austin
electric motor and grainger on longhorn blvd.)  Point is, the price is
irrelevent: what I got was 1.00000 of a motor, not 0.98 or 1.02 of a
motor.

--linas