More struggles w mutual funds

[Martin Ewing]

Sorry if this repeats prior traffic, but this is to summarize my 
experience with mutual funds, cash balance, etc.  Some surprising 
behavior (beyond imbalance) which may indicate bugs. (v. 1.6.6 on RedHat 
8.0)

1. purchased a fund using mutual fund asset acct against cash account in 
the investment portfolio.  Fine.  Tracking price quotes - very nice.

2. Sold entire position at a later time, proceeds to cash account. 
Price was different, leading to imbalance in balance sheet.

3. Modified the sale transaction with a split for capital loss expense 
(sigh).  Cash now balances.

4. Purchased same fund after 30 day wash period at a 3rd price against 
same cash account.  Accounts out of balance again.

5. Backed out of #4.  Created a new mutual asset account ("lot 2") to 
see if that helps, repeating the purchase.  Nope, out of balance again. 
  My _total asset value_ has increased!  This is not possible, since I 
just moved one asset to another.  (This is looking at the balance sheet 
calculated on the same day, with price quote set to be equal to purchase 
price.)  The increase in asset value seems to be roughly 8% of the 
purchase value.  Where could that come from?  (Value Added Tax? :-)

5. Thought I'd change the mutal fund account into a straight asset 
account via "edit".  That seems to be a no-no, but the program allows 
it. More weirdness.

6. Deleted the "lot 2" account altogether and re-created it as a 
straight asset account.  Recorded my purchase there with a note giving 
number of shares & price.

After #6, all is in balance, but I don't get price updates anymore. 
Maybe this is good enough if it preserves sanity.  Lots of work if you 
want to have "accrued unrealized gains" accounts for each position in a 
portfolio computed frequently...

The key thing, it seems, is that a purchase, sale, and re-purchase of 
the same fund (even in a different account) leads to wild effects in 
total asset values.

One philosophy would be to use an accounting system to keep track of 
realized gains & losses only.  Use your on-line brokerage or whatever to 
keep track of the daily unrealized portfolio values.

I am glad to contribute my experiences here, but I've exhausted my 
debugging energy by now.

-Martin