Foreign investment problems

[Danny Ciarniello]

I am having some problems setting up accounts for handling foreign 
investments.  When I created my file, I specified that I wanted a set of 
Investment accounts which the wizard created for me using my default 
currency (CAD).  Since I also have some US investments, I want to create 
a set of USD investment accounts that mirror my CAD investment 
accounts.  First, I create a sub-account of Assets named "US 
Investments" of type Asset with currency USD.  Then I create a 
sub-account of "US Investments" called "Brokerage Account" of type Bank 
and, again, with currency USD.  So far, so good.  Finally, I try to 
create a Stock account as a sub-account of the USD Brokerage Account 
which is where I run into problems.  When I select Stock as the account 
type, GnuCash insists on forcing me to create a new commodity.  It will 
not let me select a currency.  I can create a commodity called USD (US 
Dollar) but it isn't a currency.  Looking at the contents of the 
gcashdata file, I see:

  <act:commodity>
    <cmdty:space>ISO4217</cmdty:space>
    <cmdty:id>CAD</cmdty:id>
  </act:commodity>
 
for the GnuCash created account but

  <act:commodity>
    <cmdty:space>AMEX</cmdty:space>
    <cmdty:id>USD</cmdty:id>
  </act:commodity>

for the account I created.

I can work around the problem (assuming that this really is a problem) 
by simply changing the AMEX to ISO4217.

I also have another problem (which does not seem to be related to the 
above) with foreign investments.  According to the tutorial, I can 
create an equity account for Opening Balances for various currencies so 
I created an Equity account "Opening Balances USD" with currency USD.  
The problem is that when I create a new commodity for my USD Stock 
account and specify an Opening Balance originating from my USD Equity 
account, the "Increase" column has no value and the Balance is 0.  When 
I enter a commodity with an opening balance in my CAD Stock account, 
however, the "Increase" column has a value that is reflected in the 
balance column.

In both of the above cases, the obvious questionis "What am I doing wrong?"

Any info is appreciated.

Thanks,
Dan.