Retreiving the 'ask' price for funds in Gnuash

[Dave Reiser]

Chris Brooker wrote:
> Hi,
> I have been using Gnucash for almost a year know and it is great for
> organising my finances.
> I have several funds  that I track in Gnucash. Some of them are able to get
> quotes online using the Finance::Quotes perl module.
> However the price returned for this is always the 'mid' price. This is fine
> for funds where the 'bid' price and the 'ask' price are the same but for
> funds that have different 'bid' and 'ask' prices this is not good enough.
> I need to know how much my funds are worth if I were to sell them so I need
> to know the 'ask' price.
> If I run gnc-fq-dump it will always show the same bid and ask prices for my
> fund which I know has different prices.
> 
There's a very good financial reason why gnucash doesn't do what you ask.

I could ask for a million dollars for my house, but that doesn't mean 
it's worth that much. Similarly, someone seeing a for sale sign in front 
could walk up and offer me $200,000 for the house. That doesn't mean 
it's only worth that much because I know I can get significantly more if 
  I wait an insignificant amount of time.

Bid and Ask prices are negotiating mileposts, not valuation 
determinations. The best estimate of value is the most recent 
transaction price (i.e., Last) for an asset of similar makeup. In the 
stock market, the 'similar makeup' is really easy to do. It isn't so 
easy in the housing market.

At the end of the trading day, most stock bid prices fall and most ask 
prices rise. Does that mean the value of your funds goes up or down just 
because the market is closed? Nope -- the people really willing to trade 
have just quit working -- leaving the bottom fishers and opportunists 
with their wacky bid/ask prices on the books.

Dave
-- 
David Reiser
dbreiser at earthlink.net