Carrying over commodity accounts to a new book

[Neil Carlson]

I'm "closing out" a set of books and starting a new one, and I'm
a bit confused on how to handle stock/mutual fund accounts;
I could use some informed advice.  For $-valued accounts I'd just set
the opening balance (from equity) to be whatever the balance was at
the end of the period I'm closing out.  But these commodity accounts
aren't $-valued.  I can think of several possibilities:

1) Retain _all_ stock sale/purchase transactions but alter them to
refer to the equity account. (This way I maintain a single history
of stock transactions.)

2) Determine my basis ($-in - $-out) and create an opening balance
for the appropriate # of shares for that total $ amount, letting the
price per share be determined accordingly; or

3) something else.

What's a reasonable thing to do?  I'm worried that a bad choice
has nasty consequences down the road that can't be undone easily.

Sorry -- I'm sure this question has been discussed before, but I
can't find it in the archives.

Cheers,
  Neil
-- 
Neil Carlson <nnc at newmexico.com>