invalid quotes leading to incorrect value for foreign stock

[David Carlson]

On 3/9/2015 8:13 PM, Philippe A. wrote:
> I just solved a problem with the value of a foreign stock being incorrectly
> reported in the balance sheet.
>
> I had done mostly everything as explained here:
> http://www.gnucash.org/docs/v2.6/C/gnucash-guide/currency_purchase1.htm
> I live in Canada. My local currency is CAD.
> My foreign stock is in USD.
> I had  setup an USD bank account into which I had transferred money  with
> the appropriate exchange rate.
> >From the USD bank account I had recorded a stock purchase.
> I had pulled the current exchange rate with the quote editor.
> When I looked at the stock value in the balance sheet, it showed in CAD
> with an incorrect value. It is like the exchange rate was not applied
> correctly.
> I have moved my US stock under the US bank account. That still did not
> help. Even moving the USD account under the root did not help.
>
> In the end I went in the quote editor and did some clean up for that stock.
> I had many quotes from previous experiences, one of which was in my local
> currency. After that the balance sheet started showing the right value.
>
> The US stock does not need to be under the US bank account, possibly
> because I recorded stock purchases in USD from the beginning.
>
> I hope it will help someone.
>

There seems to be several issues muddying the waters here.  I just
resolved a much simpler issue in the balance report which manifested
itself as completely missing values for securities when the report was
set to look at the nearest in time value for a date that happened to be
between the date the security was originally purchased and the first
downloaded quote, which happened to be a couple of months for one case. 

There was an empty price entry for the date that the security was
purchased, and changing it to the actual price that was used in the
purchase transaction solved the problem.  I have no idea how the empty
price entry got there, but it has happened for several securities in
recent months.

Some issues are in the way the price quote data is handled and some are
in how the reports use the data.  Some of the problems go back years
since they were first reported in Bugzilla.

David C