Stocks, gains/losses, do I really have to calculate them by hand?

[Fredrik Persson]

On Sun, Apr 22, 2012 at 5:25 PM, John Ralls <jralls at ceridwen.us> wrote:

>
> On Apr 22, 2012, at 7:30 AM, Fredrik Persson wrote:
>
> > Let's assume I have an account with Stock X, where I buy and sell
> > frequently. It can be difficult to know exactly what gain, or loss, a
> trade
> > has generated. According to the concepts guide, I need to calculate this
> by
> > hand:
> >
> >
> http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.4/C/gnucash-guide/invest-sell1.html#invest-sellexample2
> >
> > While this is trivial in the case described in in the link above, it's a
> > lot more difficult if you've bought and sold a number of times.
> >
> > Do I really have to do this calculation by hand? Or does gnucash have
> > support for automatically calculating gains and losses from the
> > transactions alone?
> >
> > Thanks in advance!
>
> There's the Lots mechanism [1], but it can handle only FIFO, makes a
> separate transaction for the gains, and the account that it puts the gains
> splits into is hard-coded with a weird name.  I've used it a few times and
> gone back to doing it by hand.
>
> Don't forget that gnucash will do calculations for you in numeric fields.
> There's no need to pull out a calculator.
>
> Regards,
> John Ralls
>
> [1] http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Concept_of_Lots
>
>
>
John, thank you for your reply.

Can you explain what you mean when you say "gnucash will do calculations
for you in numeric fields"? I have been using gnucash for 10 years, so I am
very familiar with what it calculates. Or, at least, so I thought. Do you
mean that there is some way to make gnucash calculate the gain/loss by
itself?

/Fredrik