Stock price changes and asset-equity balance

[Don Quixote de la Mancha]

I think you might be better off tracking the changing value of your
stocks in an OpenOffice spreadsheet, rather than GnuCash.

In Column A, put the ticker symbol of each stock you own.

In Column B, put the date you bought or sold a particular company's stock.

If you bought some stock on more than one date, then right-click on
the row header (the row number) of the row just below the ticker
symbol, select Insert Rows, then enter the date for the second
purchase.  Insert a new row each time you buy or sell a given
company's stock.

In Column C, put the price you purchased the stock for on that given
date.  You need to track both the dates and the prices individually -
the dates because you want to claim long-term capital gains if you
can, and the individual purchase prices because you need your basis
price when you finally do realize your gains or losses, when you
finally sell.

In Column D, put the number of shares you bought on that date.  If you
sold some, record the sale as a negative number.

In Column E, use an =sum() formula to tally the sum of all the shares
of a given company that you own.

Once a week or so, make three entries per column for each symbol,
advancing to the right across the sheet.  The top of the triplet will
be the date, just below that will be that day's closing price, then
just below that will be the product of the closing price and the total
number of shares you own for that particular company.

On a separate sheet, make an X-Y plot of the total value of the shares
that you own of each company, as well as the total value of all the
shares that you own.  Keep an eye on that graph!

If you trade frequently, you'd be better off devoting a whole sheet to
each individual company.

If my written description isn't clear I could cook up an example
spreadsheet for you.

Don Quixote
-- 
Don Quixote de la Mancha
quixote at dulcineatech.com
http://www.dulcineatech.com

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