Questions About Investment Accounts

[Ian Konen]

On Fri, Apr 5, 2013 at 12:22 PM, Derek Atkins <warlord at mit.edu> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> writes:
>
>
> >
> > How do I enter these values into gnucash? I don't think I should have an
> > expense account for Additions and Withdrawals or an Income account for
> > Income, as these transactions never leave this account. I am really just
> > interested in see the net change in this account on my balance sheet, and
> > not have the expenses and income go through my income statement. Would
> all
> > the offsetting entries be to some equity account? I think I am really
> > missing an important concept here.
>
> Yeah, if you want to see the change in value without recording the
> income or expense then you need to keep track of your shares and see the
> delta-V by changes in price.
>
>
Well now I'm confused.  I don't think I was wrong to say "the accounting
equation is a mathematical identity", but it does seem like that
contradicts your answer, at least in this example.  Isn't an increase in
share prices of a stock you own an income whether you realize the gain or
not?  I haven't used commodity / share prices in GnuCash myself and hadn't
though about the implications of changing values, but it seems like you
could unbalance your books if you don't record the value change as coming
from an income account.

-- 
Ian Konen
iankonen at gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/iankonen
978-821-6498