New to GnuCash

David Carlson david.carlson.417 at gmail.com
Thu Jan 8 11:01:36 EST 2015


On 1/7/2015 4:15 PM, Wm wrote:
> Wed, 7 Jan 2015 20:57:21
> <1026854498.6053551.1420664241604.JavaMail.yahoo at jws10678.mail.bf1.yahoo.
> com>  David T. <sunfish62 at yahoo.com>
>
>> With regard to the question about Mutual Fund (and stocks, for that
>> matter) price tracking, GnuCash does not emphasize this. My
>> understanding (and I am sure that my comments will cause others to
>> jump in to correct my understanding) is that GnuCash aims to be a
>> traditional double-entry accounting system, and the developers take
>> the (as I understand it) accountants' viewpoint that the software
>> needs to track the held asset, and not necessarily its fluctuating
>> value. Thus, the toolset for gathering and tracking an asset's
>> unrealized loss or gain is somewhat limited.
>
> I think that is a very good summation.
>
> Consider someone doing intra-day trading, gnc would be impractical,
> you need close to real time feed.
>
> Even dealing on a daily basis wouldn't work as gnc uses publicly
> accessible (time delayed) quote sources, you'd be behind other traders.
>
> Checking your portfolio weekly or monthly or whenever you feel like
> it? gnc will able to help you with that.
>
> ===
>
> Other people may do it differently but I find myself gathering a lot
> of price information around the time I'm thinking of doing something
> and a bit afterwards, then I delete all but the immediately
> surrounding public price records (obviously I keep my real ones).
>
> Further, gnc's graphs are generally aimed at tracking assets you own,
> so if you are *thinking* of buying Company A, gnc would be a bad place
> to start as you'll just end up with a load of crap in your files and
> some graphs you may not understand [1]
>
> [1] if you can naturally read the X and Y on a gnc Price Scatterplot
> let the rest of the world know :)
>
>

This is a huge jump from basic data imports to intra day trading.  Did I
miss something?

David C


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