custom separate trading accounts

[Mike Alexander]

--On May 24, 2014 8:14:18 PM -0700 "David T." <sunfish62 at yahoo.com> 
wrote:

> I am perhaps being dense, but I was under the impression that each
> transaction has a price entry stored with it. If that is the case,
> why wouldn’t a report use that embedded transaction price for
> determining the value of the transaction?

It's not the value of each transaction that is the issue.  It's the 
current value of the stock.  Suppose you have 1000 shares purchased in 
various lots over several years.  The report needs a price to use to 
get the current value for those 1000 shares.  It uses the various 
transactions to get the purchase price (which is part of the basis), 
but this isn't useful for getting the current price.

The report provides a choice of two ways to get this price.  Either use 
the price data available via the price editor in the Tools menu or use 
the price implied by the transaction nearest the report date.

Note that the only thing this is used for is to calculate unrealized 
gain which is not taxable in most jurisdictions.

           Mike