custom separate trading accounts

[Mike Alexander]

--On May 24, 2014 2:31:41 PM -0700 gnucash.133518b at telus.net wrote:

>>> Notice that price of $11? You'll find in the attached file's Price
>>> Editor that $11/share is the price for 2013-01-05 but it should be
>>> $10/share for 2013-01-04. Am I wrong that this report should have
>>> Price = Value / Shares?
>>
>> Exactly what options did you use to produce this report?  Reports
>> aren't saved with the file so I had to guess.  If I pick a date of
>> 2013-01-04 I get something completely different (only 50 shares),
>> but if I pick 2013-01-05, it's close to your report.  The only real
>> difference is that the current value is calculated correctly.  In
>> the report you quote above it's wrong since $11*100=$1100 not $1000.
>> At any rate I don't see anything to indicate the report is not
>> working right.
>
> If I change my report date to 2013-01-05, I get a Price of $7/share,
> which is again wrong since that would be the price for 2013-01-06.
> There seems to be some weird off-by-one date issue with the displayed
> Price even though the displayed Value seems to be calculated
> according to the correct price.
>
> Are you not seeing the Assets:Investments:Shares register with a
> transaction buying 50 shares on 2013-01-04 achieving a balance of 100
> shares?
>
> The options I used for the report output I supplied in my previous
> message:
>    Accounts - Assets:Investments:Shares
>    Display - All "Show..." options ticked
>    General:
>      Date - 2013-01-04
>      Report's currency - CAD
>      Price source - Nearest in time
>      Basis calculation method - Average
>      Set preference for price list data - ticked
>      How to report brokerage fees - Include in basis
>
> If I change Price Source from "Nearest in time" to "Most recent" the
> report Price becomes $7/share, but still not $10/share. I would have
> thought "Most recent" should be relative to the report date rather
> than today's date, but maybe I just don't understand the rationale
> for applying current pricing to transactions from more than a year
> ago.
>
> I'm using GnuCash 2.6.3 for Windows "built from git rev 166cbb7+ on
> 2014-04-01", according to About GnuCash. My time zone is PST/PDT, if
> that matters.

The time zone matters a lot.  The prices are entered as of midnight in 
your time zone.  Since my time zone is 3 hours east of you that makes 
them appear on a different date in my time zone.  The report tries to 
find a price on the same date as the report's date, so it gets a 
different price in my time zone.  When I adjusted the times to agree 
with my time zone I got output that agrees with yours.

There have been ongoing discussions concerning how to better handle 
time stamps so this sort of problem doesn't happen, but so long as you 
stick to one time zone things are usually ok.  It turns out to not be a 
simple problem to solve.

The time zone issue really only affects this report for the look up of 
prices in the price DB.  If you want to use the actual transaction 
prices then uncheck "Set preference for price list data" in the report 
options.  This may give you more nearly what you want.

Remind me again of what else is wrong with this report.  I've lost 
track of the issues you've raised.

             Mike