currency linked to a stock

[John Ralls]

> On Dec 22, 2014, at 1:20 AM, Sébastien de Menten <sdementen at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Coming back to the currency linked (or not) to a commodity. In the gnucash
> guide, I read
> 
> If you want to track income (dividends/interest/capital gains) on a
> per-stock or fund basis, you will need to create an
> Income:Dividends:STOCKSYMBOL, Income:Cap Gain (Long):STOCKSYMBOL,
> Income:Cap Gain (Short):STOCKSYMBOL and Income:Interest:STOCKSYMBOL account
> for each stock you own that pays dividends or interest.
> 
> Now, if I want to do this for the Yahoo stock, what is the currency I
> should use for these income accounts ? Should I use USD ? or does it depend
> on the broker/exchange/... And if it is USD, is then USD the "natural"
> currency of the YAHOO commodity ? Still a bit lost...
> 

That structure is for the Advanced Portfolio Report. I don't know how well it deals with multiple currencies, so the safe answer would be to make all of them in your default currency. 

That advice is a bit unclear and rather US-centric. You may need *either* Income:Dividends *or* Income:Interest; you won't need both. A security pays one or the other or neither (as is the case with Yahoo). You'll need at least one cap gains account, but how many you need and what they are will depend upon whether your country taxes gains differently for different holding periods or other reasons. If you trade on margin you'll also need an expense::interest account, and depending on your country's tax laws you may need an expense::commissions account as well.

The report aside, you can use whatever currency makes life easiest for you for those accounts. In most cases it's probably easiest to record interest and dividend income in the currency in which you receive it and the rest in the currency of the brokerage account.

Regards, 
John Ralls