need help with stock investment reporting

[John Morris]

>>   The account structure is:
>> assets:investments:alpha brokerage:stocks:IBM
>> assets:investments:beta brokerage:stocks:IBM
>> 
>> Because I want to know the total assets at each brokerage, I put the stock under its respective brokerage.  In the report I just want to know how IBM is  performing overall.
> 
> I question your logic (in a nice way, of course).
> 
> You have two separate holdings of IBM stock, gnc reflects that.
> 
> gnc doesn't impose an account structure so, for example
> 
> assets:investments:stocks:IBM:alpha brokerage
> assets:investments:stocks:IBM:beta brokerage
> 
> will work fine if you prefer.

  This is a good example of why an orthogonal tagging system would be very helpful. Since GnuCash lacks such a system, I have developed my own. I use a pair of slash characters wrapped around my tag in the memo or note field to simulate such a system. For example, I might use /Alpha/ for the Alpha brokerage and /Beta/ for the Beta brokerage. Then, when I want to pull a report by brokerage, I would do a find using GnuCash's grep search capability to define the group of transactions to use. Of course, the alternative account structure suggested originally could be used with tags for each stock: /IBM/ and /Apple/, for example. Fortunately, GnuCash does autofill recent memo and note entries, so I don't have to worry too much about remembering to use the same tag each time.

Best,
John